Working together to make landscape-scale impacts for the koala

Despite being one of Australia’s most enigmatic species, the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) is facing population decline on the east coast. The reason for this is a complex interaction of 200 years of habitat loss and degradation, the introduction of novel threats, and changes in disease dynamics. Kuril & Currawong collaborate with World Wide Fund for Nature within their Koala’s Forever project to foster the recovery of the koala at a landscape scale.

Our role is multi-part. We support this project by:

• Collaborating with Greencollar, WWF and Queensland Trust for Nature in the development and refinement of a method for measuring koala population and habitat quality using the Accounting for Nature framework

• Phase 1 of ‘Koala Friendly Carbon’ - an innovative partnership between Climate Friendly, WWF and private landholders to transition land back to high quality koala habitat in return for carbon credits. We supported systems development, restoration planning, revegetation monitoring and reporting. The project now enters Phase 2, with an ever growing internal WWF team who we continue to support in an advisory and auditing role

• Monitoring of koala habitat improvement projects across ~250km of the east coast from Brisbane to Grafton. We support this Federally funded multi-year project by auditing the condition of koala population and habitat at sites receiving support. By 2025 this project will have monitored 150 sites across 50 properties and will report on three years worth of action to support the recovery of the koala

• Supporting the delivery of Citizen Science and Indigenous Ranger workshops aimed at building capacity for using standardised methods, integrating small scale restoration into large scale landscape initiatives, and understanding the mechanisms by which we can restore and retain koala habitat

Yugera, Ugurapul, Gitabul, Bundjalung and Gumbainggir Country