DEAR News Of The Area,

Most interesting to read “local bushie” Darcy Browning’s observations and reflections upon koalas within the proposed Headwaters Nature Reserve (covering all the public native forests across the Bellinger, Kalang and Nambucca River headwaters) and within other parts of the Upper Bellinger Valley.

Darcy’s lack of koala sightings might well be related to his occupancy of a cattle grazing property where most of the prime koala habitat on the fertile flats is long gone.

At my place (precisely 3.96km from Darcy’s home) koalas are frequently heard and seen because we live within a nationally significant stronghold for our beloved Dunggirr (the Gumbaynggirr name for them).

My closest neighbour (a friend of Darcy’s) often looks out his kitchen window straight at the big alpha male that occupies our shared private conservation property, Darcy might even have seen a photo of this big boy.

Even closer to Darcy’s, at the top of Diehappy Creek, a new resident of the valley and conservation land custodian is kept awake with multiple male Koalas bellowing away all through the night.

It is a veritable koala orgy on the hills right above Darcy’s ranch.

Further up the hills along the Horseshoe in Roses Creek and Scotchman State Forest where the NSW Government logging company seeks to industrially log our public native forests, their staff identified a single Koala feed tree.

Detailed work by community members (younger local bushies) in these proposed industrial logging coupes found and photographed numerous koalas and found abundant evidence of their foraging habitat, specifically lots of prime big Tallowwood trees (aka Koala candy) and Grey Gum trees laden with scratches and carpeted with scats beneath.

To independently verify these sightings conservation sniffer dogs were brought in and confirmed the abundant presence of koalas right across the proposed industrial logging zones.

If Darcy would like some lessons in koala survey techniques, we would be delighted to provide them so that he can start to see the on-ground reality in these nationally significant koala strongholds.

We would also love to show him the abundant Endangered Greater Gliders and the Vulnerable Long-nosed Potoroos and Yellow-bellied Gliders that all have a nationally significant stronghold and important refuge within the proposed Headwaters Nature Reserve.

These species have recently been made extinct because of horrific old growth industrial logging at Ellis State Forest on the Dorrigo Plateau.

We could also take Darcy to the territories of the most ancient songbird on Earth, the Rufous Scrub-bird, in Oakes State Forest that are currently threatened with extirpation because of proposed industrial logging of these public native forests.

The scientific evidence is irrefutable; industrial logging is sending our Koalas, Greater Gliders and Yellow-bellied Gliders rapidly towards extinction by destroying, fragmenting and degrading their habitat. Australia is the world epicentre of mammal extinctions and state-sanctioned and taxpayer-subsidised industrial logging operations are making this disgraceful situation rapidly much much worse.

To avoid extinctions and keep our rivers flowing clean and clear (and to provide water security and drinking water to all the coastal towns across the Bellinger and Nambucca Shires) we need to protect our steep headwater forests and to make the Headwaters Nature Reserve.

This will have the added benefit of saving taxpayers money (something that I know that Darcy is super-keen upon and is consistently publicly railing for), specifically because the state logging company lost $9 million of our taxes logging our forests and driving our Koalas extinct last year alone.

Regards,
Mark GRAHAM.