2,000 acres of wooded land have been purchased by the government of New South Wales in Australia to be declared a national park to protect koalas and other endangered species, MTI writes.
Back in February, the government changed the conservation status of koalas in New South Wales and Queensland from weak to weak. The Australian government earlier announced that $36 million will be spent on restoring koalas’ natural habitat.
The current procedure covers three areas of major importance for the survival of koalas: Monaro in the south, near Yampa in the north and Tari in the east.
The goal is to double the number of herbivores by 2050, state environment secretary James Griffin said. In addition to koalas, protection for long-nosed finches and owls, which belong to the kangaroo rat family, is also of paramount importance.
The number of koalas in Australia has decreased significantly over the past 20 years. More than 60,000 koalas were killed, injured or fled their habitat in a major wildfire between August 2019 and March 2020, according to the WWF alone. It is difficult to estimate the exact number of koalas, but some estimates suggest that the koala population has almost halved in 20 years. While in 2001 there were still 185,000 free-living koalas, that number has decreased to 92,000 by 2021.
