Glider habitat destroyed under Labor's watch in promised Great Koala National Park
Greens MP and spokesperson for the environment Sue Higginson has today joined community and visited Orara East State Forest on Gumbaynggirr Country, where industrial logging is destroying critical habitat for threatened gliders and koalas within the footprint of the long-promised Great Koala National Park.
Orara East contains the only intact north–south forest corridor in this section of the Mid North Coast, and supports a high-density Koala population, a Yellow-bellied Glider group, and a suite of hollow-dependent threatened species. Despite these values, Forestry Corporation is not required to conduct nocturnal glider surveys or specific koala assessments before logging due to the forest’s designation as a “Coastal Intensive” logging zone.
Greens MP and spokesperson for the environment Sue Higginson said “Orara East is a key part of the Great Koala National Park and is a recovering, high-conservation value forest that is still providing refuge for some of our most vulnerable species. It is one of the places that is key to the Minns Labor Government’s promise to protect - but they are allowing it to be logged without even checking the threatened species and wildlife that lives there.”
“The NSW Government’s own Glider Observations in the Mid North Coast Assessment Area report, published in March 2025, confirms that the proposed Great Koala National Park is critical habitat for the endangered Greater Glider and the vulnerable Yellow-bellied Glider. It states clearly that both species need large, connected, high-quality forests to persist in the wild. Yet instead of protecting these forests, the Government is letting them be destroyed.”
“Only one glider survey was undertaken in Orara East for this report. That’s not a meaningful ecological assessment - it’s a rubber stamp. Local monitoring has confirmed Yellow-bellied Gliders and Koalas are active in these compartments, but the Government’s failure to properly survey the area has allowed Forestry Corporation to move in unchecked.”
“Labor was elected on a promise to create a 176,000 hectare Great Koala National Park, but instead, more than 12,000 hectares of koala habitat have already been logged. Orara East is a textbook example of what happens when the Government delays - critical forests are reduced to wasteland while ministers keep promising protection ‘soon’.”
“Every week of delay makes the Great Koala National Park weaker, smaller, more fragmented and less great. The Premier must act now to end this extinction logging, protect Orara East, and deliver the Park the community was promised.”