THE Voices of South West Rocks Community (VOSWR) group celebrated International Wild Koala Day outside the highly contentious ‘Rise’ development in South West Rocks on Wednesday 3 May.

More than 40 community members gathered at the Phillip Drive site at 9:30am last Wednesday morning to celebrate the awareness day, highlighting threats to endangered species and the actions you can take to help protect them.

The gathering took place at the ‘Rise’ development site, where the community fears the removal of koala food trees from the site will further endanger the iconic koala locally.

Children took part in the day making clay koalas, while there were free koala trees to take home and plant, and colourful cupcakes to celebrate the day.

Voices of South West Rocks Community (VOSWR) spokesperson Larah Kennedy welcomed everyone present to celebrate koalas and the importance of standing up for nature through community action.

“The Voices of South West Rocks Community have maintained a peaceful vigil at ‘Rise’ for 27 days, to raise awareness about inappropriate developments in South West Rocks.

“Zombie DAs are popping up all over our coast.

“They are outdated developments that have no social license, ignore current science, and endanger wildlife by clearing coastal habitats.

“It’s death by a thousand cuts for our endangered wildlife, land clearing in NSW has tripled since 2016 and as of last year, the koala was listed as endangered.

“We urge the state government to update NSW’s outdated environmental planning laws and urge the community to come along and find out what positive steps you can take to protect koalas,” Ms Kennedy said.

South West Rocks Figtree Descendants Aboriginal Corporation member Nancy Patterson said, “The Yarri (koala in Dunghutti) is a part of our Dreaming.

“They’ve returned to Country, and we need to learn how to protect them, and their homes.”

“South West Rocks Figtree has actively engaged South West Rocks and other schools in the Macleay to raise awareness about koalas, how to identify them, sharing our Yarri stories and connecting to culture,” Mrs Patterson said.

Judy McKay from FAWNA told News Of The Area, “If you see any koalas you need to log into www.koala.nsw.gov.au/report-sighting the app helps to keep track of koalas in the wild, and learn how to identify sickness in our koala population, if you see sickness or injury, please call either FAWNA or the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital on 02 6584 1522.”

The proponents of the ‘Rise’ development saw fit to bulldoze koala trees on the development site the day before Wild Koala Day, with protestors believing this to demonstrate the developer’s complete disregard of, and disrespect for, the South West Rocks community.

“We wanted to make today a celebration of our wild koala community and this is what we’ve done, yet it still feels like commiserations in that the trees have now all been removed,” said Larah Kennedy.

“‘Rise’ is a controversial 30-year-old Zombie DA to build a mega accommodation complex, abutting sensitive coastal wetlands and had koala food trees on site.

“We are keeping up the fight, we must stay strong, as there’s plenty still to do, so we can all take a minute to reflect that the development behind us is not acceptable, to us or anyone here.”

“We will continue to fight Zombie DAs.

“We’re not going away, we have many plans in place to keep this fight moving forward across all levels of government,” Ms Kennedy said.

For more information contact Larah Kennedy on 0401 197 433.

By Karen GRIBBIN