New England Koala Sanctuary

The Armidale Express

12/1/2024

New England Koala Sanctuary as part of conservation trust

Transcript

00:30I know exactly where they were. I still know exactly where they'd be.

00:43In an overview, Richard, southeast of Armidale.

00:47So we'll probably resurrect that? Run with that?

00:49Yeah.

00:50And put roughly in place in about 1870 to here.

00:54Yeah.

00:55So we're now all in Armidale, Jimarrake.

00:56Jimarrake.

00:57Yeah.

00:58Yeah.

00:59Yeah.

01:00Yeah.

01:01Yeah.

01:02Yeah.

01:03Yeah.

01:04Yeah.

01:05Yeah.

01:06Yeah.

01:07Yeah.

01:08Yeah.

01:09Yeah.

01:10Yeah.

01:11Yeah.

01:12Yeah.

01:13Yeah.

01:14Yeah.

01:15Yeah.

01:16Yeah.

01:17Yeah.

01:18Yeah.

01:19Yeah.

01:20Yeah.

01:21Yeah.

01:22Yeah.

01:23Yeah.

01:24Yeah.

01:25Yeah.

01:26Yeah.

01:27Good plant, yemmy.

01:28Like there's no offshoots of timber usually over mailden.

01:29Yeah, it's quite an impressive species.

01:31So Peter just said, this is great.

01:33Yeah.

01:34Yeah.

01:35It's good.

01:36It's great here.

01:37Yeah.

01:38It's great.

01:39It's phoot.

02:10comes down. It's where Dummy Creek comes down through.

02:40I saw that before, the little red bits on the ground.

03:11I mean those burnt trees, I've seen it all come through.

03:17The new younger growth coming through, so this is all koala habitat.

03:22Yep, yep, yep. Usually the maturity comes on through.

03:27Yeah, yeah. Just keep talking about young, young, really well there.

03:32So, you know, we've got a lot of young koalas coming through.

03:38So, you know, we've got a lot of work to do to actually get all this up to speed.

03:55All like old timber yards, probably.

03:58Yeah, just walk past me.

04:01So that's all done.

04:04And this is looking so healthy.

04:06Yes.

04:07It's never looked this healthy.

04:08So before the fire, you didn't have the same amount of regrowth?

04:11No, no, no.

04:13And I think, you know, because of the fire, the trees obviously dropped their seeds.

04:18And it's a pretty difficult country to get a complete pig control program.

04:23You know, it's so hard to get all of it done at once, you know.

04:28And the CRC for Invasive Species, I think it's called.

04:32Yep, yep.

04:34A couple of those guys at UNE as well as part of the CRC.

04:37Yep.

04:38So not always, you know, it would be great to get some research done.

04:52What the tender does allow us to do is providing the funds from the state government.

04:57We can put that towards active conservation management for the property.

05:02This was an agreement in perpetuity.

05:04It meant that not only were we preserving that land for our own time,

05:08this was in perpetuity for our successional plans for families and anybody who might come in.

05:14So plus the fact that there's a funding arrangement that comes in each year,

05:19so it means that we can control feral animals and feral plants

05:25and really manage the property as best because from an agricultural point of view,

05:30we can't generate income from this land.

05:32So we're generating income through conservation.

05:35What better way is there to go?

05:37We knew from a lot of, again,

05:40records from people telling us that this was koala habitat

05:44and the koalas were probably unfortunately wiped out probably by bushfire.

05:48There's certainly scratch marks on the trees

05:50and from the old graziers and previous owners,

05:53they've said things like they couldn't sleep at night for the koala noises.

05:57The fact that there is no fence between here

06:00and three or four hundred thousand hectares of National Park Estate

06:04means that if we can be the initiator of bringing koalas back

06:08where they're in a population that they will survive,

06:11that can only be a good thing.

06:13Basically it comes down to a feeling good about conserving something,

06:19but it means that we can actually do something now that's meaningful.

06:22It's basically what a small group of people can do privately

06:26for the benefit of everyone.

06:28There's some fantastic koala habitat here

06:31and there's 11 plus species of koala friendly suitable habitat here,

06:37but it's also a mark of scale.

06:41It's quite a large scale property.

06:43It's a good solid investment in terms of protecting koala habitat

06:46in the Armidale region.

06:48What's lovely is that you see a very well connected landscape

06:53that has all of the attributes, you know, water, protection

06:59and all those other sort of habitat management aspects

07:02that are available here and make it a good property

07:05for koala conservation.

07:07The climate refugium model that shows that, you know,

07:09this will be a place for koalas to go

07:12and may offer them some protection as some of those landscapes

07:16become hotter and hotter.

07:17There are so many other native species and opportunities

07:21for native animals to be able to thrive and survive

07:24in this conservation agreement.

07:25We really cherish the opportunity to be able to protect this

07:29for the long term and, you know, continue to work with the landholders.

07:32One of the great things about working with the Biodiversity Conservation Trust

07:35is that we, you know, we're really at the coalface of delivering support

07:40to a broad range of stakeholders.

07:42You know, so we work closely with the agricultural community,

07:45we work closely with the conservation community

07:47and importantly we work together to improve the outcomes

07:51for biodiversity in private land conservation.

07:55This koala tender is designed to help the NSW Koala Strategy

08:01reach their goal of having doubled koala populations by 2050.

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