As part of the strategy, the council is conducting surveys to identify koala populations to enable it to identify priority focus areas for conservation, recovery, action and funding.

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Council employs drones, dogs and song meters to locate the koalas.

A survey recently conducted by the Council on part of a property at Copeland found eleven koalas, which was a ratio of one koala per nine hectares.

A population of Greater Gliders was also located.

Engaging with private landowners is an important part of the fight to save the koala from extinction and, on 16 January, an event was held to assist landholders identify koala feed trees on their properties and to discuss other koala related issues.

Even though it was a hot day, the event included a walk-and-talk field trip into the bush where participants were able to look at locally occurring koala feed trees.

The day was led by Caitlin Orr, Koala Project Officer from Council, and Isabelle Strachan, a Private Land Conservation Officer from Landcare who showed guests what to look for when searching for koalas in the wild, and how to identify common feed tree species.

The event was part of the Private Land Conservation Matters program, funded by the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Trust in partnership with Landcare NSW, and supported by MidCoast Council.

“About 70 percent of NSW is privately owned land, and this program’s purpose is to engage local landowners to conserve what they have on their properties,” Ms Strachan said.

One interesting feature of this property is that it contains a significant number of Craven Grey Box trees (Eucalyptus Largeana), which, as well as being a koala feed tree, is an endangered eucalypt.

Participants were shown how to sustainably harvest, process and store Eucalyptus seed for the purposes of propagation.

“Those taking part were very engaged and interested and asked lots of questions.

“It was a great success and more events are planned in the coming months in the Midcoast region.”

Ms Orr added: “Council is keen to hear from landowners with at least 50 hectares of bushland who would like a koala survey to be carried out on their property.”

By John WATTS