Contributing to South East Queensland Koala Conservation Strategy
- wildlifeconservh7wrm
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
There are various ways in which we can make positive impacts with our conservation science and expertise, and a key one is engaging with policy when the opportunity arises. Our beloved koalas are a big deal in Queensland, receiving disproportionately more funding than all other threatened species. And yet, despite the focus, koala habitat continues to be cleared. The Queensland Government has proposed a new koala conservation strategy for southeast Queensland, so CBCS turned our collective attention to providing recommendations.
The collective expertise across CBCS is impressive in its breadth and depth: experts on koalas, mammalogy, environmental law, mathematics of monitoring, veterinary science, species distribution modelling, spatial planning, decision science and more. Together, the team’s submission outlines how a stronger science-based approach could help reverse koala decline across Southeast Queensland.
Importantly, the submission calls for a strategy that moves away from managing decline, towards improving long-term koala population persistence through evidence-backed action, transparent decision-making, and rigorous evaluation of conservation outcomes.
“An effective koala conservation strategy must be grounded in a clear theory of change, with each major intervention explicitly linked to how it will reduce threats, prevent further habitat loss, and strengthen koala population persistence over time,” says CBCS’s Dr April Reside, who coordinated the submission. “Monitoring must also be embedded into this theory of change and designed to test which management interventions improve conservation outcomes. Without this clarity, there is a risk that effort and investment will continue to be directed toward actions that are visible but not improving outcomes for koalas.”
The submission makes the following recommendations for the Southeast Queensland Koala Conservation Strategy 2026-2036:
Adopt a koala conservation strategy grounded in an explicit theory of change, with each intervention linked to a clear pathway for reducing decline.
Protect existing habitat first. Strengthen clearing rules to prevent further habitat loss and avoid reliance on offsets to compensate for ongoing habitat destruction. Restoration should deliver additional gains beyond compensating for losses.
Prioritise funding toward interventions with evidence of effectiveness, especially habitat protection, disease management, and targeted mitigation of major threats based on their importance for koala population persistence.
Make koala data, methods, models, and code transparent and accessible, with open release where possible and straightforward researcher access in cases where safeguards are needed.
Redesign monitoring to enable evaluation of management effectiveness, not just detect trends. Monitoring should occur in a timely manner and be supported with independent reproducible analysis and targeted independent research funding.
Where robust empirical data already exist, decisions should be guided by those data rather than relying primarily on modelling, expert opinion, or consultation processes.
Habitat protections for threatened species, even iconic ones, aren’t a guarantee. And even when protections are granted, these can always be renegotiated with successive governments, particularly when the need for housing becomes dire. Therefore, it will be an ongoing job for conservation scientists to continue to engage with policy to ensure our threatened species needs are being heard.
This has also been published on the CBCS website: https://cbcs.centre.uq.edu.au/project/cbcs-leads-submission-koala-conservation-strategy-discussions-0
Image credits: Eric Vanderduys.
Comments