Tuesday, 26 November 2024

Koala management

Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (19:06): (1310) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Environment, and the action I seek is for the Victorian government to fulfil its promise and hand back the remaining 6000 hectares of Brataualung Forest Park. In 2006 the Victorian government, the then Labor government, announced a new 8000-hectare reserve in the Strzelecki Ranges. This was on the back of Strzelecki having the least amount of reserved land in any bioregion in Victoria. Still to this day it is only 5 per cent. What makes this region so special is the Strzelecki koala population, the only relic koala population remaining in Victoria and South Australia. The Strzelecki koala was thought to be extinct because of the drastic impacts of land clearing and hunting up until the 1990s. While other koala populations were translocated from French Island, the Strzelecki koala population maintained its genetic strength in South Gippsland, which is crucial to the survival of koalas.

Friends of the Earth estimate that the Strzelecki koala population is as few as 2500, which is critically low, and yet our native icon is being treated as a pest, being killed en masse and displaced across Victoria, particularly so in Portland and Gippsland, in the interests of logging. The government bought this land back from Hancock Victorian Plantations and paid in full in 2008, yet it took another 10 years for the first allotment to be handed back. I thank the member for Mill Park for handing 2400 hectares back in 2018. Since then, nothing has happened. There is still almost 6000 hectares the government has not handed back.

In time this reserve would be fantastic for koalas, with the promised reforestation and replanting of indigenous trees and by prioritising koala food trees such as the mountain grey gum, blue gum, Strzelecki gum and swamp gum. The last hand back to complete the reserve was meant to occur in 2027. Currently only one out of the four hand backs has occurred. It is the belief among experts and locals that the stalling is due to the government and Hancock both refusing to remove the 100 pine trees needed to get rid of pine wildings within the reserve. Another opportunity for the government is extending reserve areas into Mullungdung State Forest, which would provide protection to the biggest population of Strzelecki koalas remaining. A quarter of the population lives inside this unprotected forest due to its high number of mountain grey gum trees. Mullungdung is also home to a significant glider population who are in desperate need of protection. I ask the minister to protect these dying native species and fulfil its promise to hand back the land, a promise that Victorians and our animals have been waiting for for 18 years – (Time expired)