The drums are beating louder for a moratorium on logging in koala habitat as an emergency response to the loss of thousands of koalas and their habitat due to wildfires.
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The push gained momentum during a NSW Legislative Council inquiry into koala populations and habitat in NSW.
A hearing was held yesterday in Parliament House.
Port Macquarie Koala Hospital clinical director Cheyne Flanagan joined the calls of Indigenous fire practitioner, Victor Steffensen, Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation CEO Oliver Costello and North East Forest Alliance president Dailon Pugh in calling for the moratorium.
Ms Flanagan described the current threat to koala populations as "an emergency situation".
"We need a moratorium on logging," she told the inquiry.
"We just need to stop everything until we can take a breath and get independent people to come in and reassess this whole thing.
"There is minimal habitat left, so let's hang onto it until we can work out the best way forward. That's what the government needs to do.
"This is an emergency situation."
Greens member and inquiry chair Cate Faehrmann asked Ms Flanagan about the future of koalas under climate change conditions in terms of increasing fire risks.
Ms Flanagan said koalas don't cope well with heat.
"It (climate change threat) is not good," she said. "With increasing temperature ranges ... if their habitat is being decimated they don't have cooler areas to go to.
"They don't cope very well with heat and can simply die, literally, from that."
The clinical director said lower rainfall means that koalas can't get their necessary leaf moisture from eucalypt trees.
She said that was one of the reasons behind the koala hospital introducing watering stations into fire areas.
"We are finding these animals that aren't even burnt are coming in and just drinking for days," she told the inquiry.
"I had one in the other day that drank for an hour ... because these animals are just so dehydrated."
Ms Flanagan said a plan by the Office of Environment and Heritage to push ahead with a policy to try and separate koalas from urban areas was going to fail.
"Koalas like to live in the same areas where people want to live," she said.
"They want better quality soils and better trees; therefore they like to live on those coastal strips.
"If an urban area is managed properly, if it has good street trees and slow (vehicle traffic) speeds, koalas can exist in an urban environment if it is planned well.
"The idea of excluding them from some places is going to fail," she said.
The idea of excluding them from some places is going to fail.
- Cheyne Flanagan
"What do you do with these animals if they are under such pressure that they have to radiate into a town because there is not enough habitat where they are.
"Well, you are going to end up with island populations and in-breeding. That will bring all sorts of genetic issues," she told the inquiry.
In a statement prior to his appearance at the inquiry, Mr Pugh said since July, wild fires have burnt out over 1.6 million hectares of the north east NSW bioregion (north from the Hunter River and westward to the Great Escarpment).
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He said this represents 28% of the region and 39% of native vegetation.
"It has been observed that in eucalypt forests, even where tree canopies are just scorched rather than burnt, that most leaves are desiccated or die, leaving little food for surviving koalas, he said.
"Various koala habitat models show that over a quarter of potential Koala habitat has been burnt since July, though koala losses are expected to be far greater because many areas of potential koala habitat that escaped burning have already been degraded by logging, previous fires and other factors, and thus already lost most of their koalas.
"As the wildfires have impacted particularly heavily on know core populations, such as on the Richmond Lowlands, Dorrigo Plateau and around Lake Innes, it is likely that over a third of the North Coast's koalas have lost their habitat, at least until it regenerates.
"An expert workshop in 2012 estimated that koala populations on the North Coast had declined by 50% in the past 20 years, leaving an extant population of around 8400 koalas.
"It is likely that thousands of these survivors have been killed, with many populations now on the verge of collapse."
Mr Pugh said that in just one fire season, which is not over yet, thousands of koalas have lost their homes, and most of these are likely to have died.
"If we want to give Koalas a chance to survive this unfolding catastrophe then a logging moratorium must immediately be placed upon all potential koala habitat in order to allow burnt feed trees a chance to recover, and to protect the remaining intact refuges essential as source areas for recolonisation," Mr Pugh said.
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