A plan to protect koalas in South East Queensland has been announced, with public feedback being sought for the new five-year conservation strategy.
The plan covers protection measures across more than half a million hectares of land.
Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk said Queenslanders would be able to have their say on the draft South East Queensland Koala Conservation Strategy 2019-24.
“We are releasing a landmark draft strategy and draft mapping that outline strong measures to protect koala habitat and address the threats impacting South-east Queensland’s koala population,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
“New mapping identifies more than 570,000 hectares of land to be declared koala priority areas – an area that is twice the size of the ACT – of which more than 300,000 hectares is core habitat.”
She said the Government was also proposing to implement stronger regulations to limit clearing in large interconnected areas of high quality habitat.
“Ensuring the protection of these large corridors of land will address one of the main causes of a declining koala population, which is the destruction of habitat,” the Premier said.
“The release of the draft strategy outlines existing and future actions to deliver on an election commitment to implement the Koala Expert Panel’s six recommendations for protecting koalas.”
Ms Palaszczuk also announced the Government was providing $50,000 for koala care infrastructure.
People will have until 31 January 2020 to provide feedback on the draft strategy.
The draft strategy can be accessed at this PS News link.
