ARE MAPS THE KEY TO BETTER PROTECTION?
Now twelve years in the making, the Australian Koala Foundation’s koala habitat maps are proving invaluable tools for local and regional planners. The ‘Koala Habitat Atlas’ reflects decades of scientific research, field surveys and data collected from tens of thousands of trees. Using GIS technology, scientists progressively identify, rank and map koala habitat, maintaining the finer scale and amount of data necessary to convey local landscapes in a reliable, useful way. Maps cover the New South Wales local government areas of Port Stephens, Campbelltown, Greater Taree, Richmond River, Tweed and the Pilliga region as well as Queensland’s Brisbane, Redland, Logan, Noosa, and Esk shires and Victoria’s Ballarat City and Strzelecki Ranges. The Australian Koala Foundation is concerned that, like many other native species and the bush in general, koala populations face death by a thousand cuts – ‘the tyranny of small decisions’. Critical for habitat protection, its maps provide a record of k
