Late on Sunday 13th August, a bushfire started on a property south of Dilkoon Creek. Hundreds of hectares of Glossy Black-Cockatoo feed habitat destroyed with that habitat unlikely to recover for at least 7 or 8 years. The resident Koalas will have been impacted, and while animals that managed to find a tall tree could have survived this fire, the scorching of leaves is likely to make feed unpalatable for weeks to come.
This is the latest in a series of pictorial reports documenting the destruction of koala and other fauna habitat in the Gibberagee State Forest, north of Grafton. These reports have been prompted by the failure of ministers, their departments, and regulatory authorities, to respond to pleas to protect this significant ecological asset.
The Clarence Environment Centre has been lobbying State and Federal Governments to protect resident Koalas in the above forest from planned logging operations for over 5 months. Again, the Clarence Environment Centre calls for an immediate halt to the destruction of koala habitat at Gibberagee, and an end to all logging in public forests as a matter of urgency.
In November 2019, the Liberation Trail bushfire decimated the Nymboida area, destroying more than 50 homes. The environmental damage was enormous, made worse by what is arguably the worst drought in the close to 200 years of white occupation of the area. That prolonged drought, combined with record high temperatures and heatwaves, saw moisture content of vegetation at such low levels that living trees were reduced to charcoal.