Fears rise for Kangaroo Island koalas amid controversial plan to chop and burn timber plantations

A company’s plan to chop and burn thousands of hectares of timber plantations on Kangaroo Island could have devastating consequences for the island’s surviving koalas.

Plans to fell Kangaroo Island’s blue gums, burn the wood and convert the land for farming could have devastating consequences for the island’s koalas, it’s been claimed.

After the 2020 bushfire devastated the island’s koala population, there are fears many of those that remain could be wiped out if Kangaroo Island Plantation Timbers follows through with its plan.

The company – which announced the drastic measure after it was refused permission to build a port on the island – is working on a strategy to manage the koala population in its 18,700ha of plantations.

SA Best MLC Frank Pangallo said thousands of koalas were believed to remain in the trees, having survived the 2019-20 summer bushfires in unburnt areas.

The company’s announcement this month that it would fell its plantations the land to agriculture followed the refusal of its application to build a seaport at Smith Bay on the Island’s north coast.

A burnt blue gum plantation in the Gosse district on Kangaroo Island, on January 7, 2020. Picture: Dean Martin

The port, costing more than $40m, would have allowed the company to export large volumes of timber and followed decades of uncertainty over how to get wood off of the island.

Mr Pangallo, who has criticised Planning Minister Vickie Chapman’s decision to block the plan, said it would have huge implications for koalas.

“It’s killed off so many opportunities for the island and now there’s the prospect it’s going to kill off the koalas,” Mr Pangallo said.

Mr Pangallo understands the company is required to identify the koalas in its plantations and produce a plan for their relocation.

“Where are you going to relocate them and who’s going to pay for that?” he asked.

“If you euthanise them it’s going to create an uproar in the community and be a public relations nightmare.”

Kangaroo Island Plantation Timbers managing director Keith Lamb declined to comment.

A koala in burned vegetation on the Playford Hwy in Kingscote after the Kangaroo Island bushfires. Picture: Brad Fleet

The marsupials’ numbers have been a point of controversy on Kangaroo Island for years, after the species grew from just 18 animals in the 1920s, to more than 50,000 in 2019, before the bushfires.

Last year, the Environment Department estimated there were 5000-10,000 left.

Kangaroo Island Wildlife Network president Kate Welz believed thousands of those koalas remained in the plantations.

She said the animals lost 85 per cent of their habitat during the blazes, and on the island’s western end, there was little left other than the fire-damaged plantations.

“If those trees are cut, regardless of whether they’re burned or harvested and if the koalas move out of those areas into the natural vegetation that’s left, you’re talking about a browsing pressure that’s going to completely annihilate the vegetation that’s left,” Mrs Welz said.

“And that has a flow on effect for thousands of different species of animals – it’s catastrophic what will happen.”

Supplied Editorial Fwd: Photo for Kate

Her organisation wants a meeting with the company and Environment Department to discuss the issue.

Moving the animals off the island was not viable, she said, because they were acclimatised to their local environment and on the mainland they would be vulnerable to disease.

“You don’t want to put a healthy animal in an area where they’re likely to get chlamydia,” Mrs Welz said.

Ms Chapman said after the fires, many of the koalas living on the plantations were either relocated or migrated to other parts of the island.

“Some now call a property I have an interest in home, and I will continue to feed and water them,” she said.

“I am confident that all efforts will be made to ensure the koalas are safely removed from the plantation site, regardless of whether the trees are harvested, cleared or otherwise removed.”

According to the National Parks and Wildlife Act, if koalas need to be moved they must be managed humanely. The Environment Department is working with KIPT on the issue.

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