In October 2026, the parliament of the Australian state of New South Wales passed a law creating the Great Koala National Park — a territory that will unite nearly half a million hectares of forest and become home to roughly twelve thousand of these marsupials. After more than ten years of campaigning, conservationists and local communities have finally achieved their goal, and the park is due to open before the end of the year.
The new park will cover 178 thousand hectares of state forests previously earmarked for logging and add them to the already existing protected lands. In total, this will provide 475 thousand hectares where not only koalas but also more than a hundred other rare species can live — from southern greater gliders to glossy black cockatoos and rare spider orchids. Koalas in New South Wales have been listed as endangered since 2022: their numbers have fallen by a third over two decades because of habitat loss, disease and fires, and the catastrophic fires of 2019–2020 destroyed up to 71 percent of the remaining animals on the north coast.
An important role in managing the park will remain with Indigenous peoples — the Gumbaynggirr and the Dunghutti. Eight Aboriginal rangers will work through community-controlled organisations, and some positions in the park will be reserved for Indigenous people. This is not merely a formality: traditional knowledge helps to better understand how to preserve an ecosystem that has been shaped over millennia.
However, behind this success lies a controversial funding mechanism. The long-term upkeep of the park is planned to be secured through the sale of carbon credits under an improved forest management scheme. The government has already allocated 140 million Australian dollars for the launch, but in the future revenues will depend on trading emissions allowances. Critics regard this approach as "greenwashing": instead of a direct ban on logging and reducing industrial emissions, nature is turned into a commodity that can be "offset".
The Greens and some conservationists voted for the law, acknowledging that a compromise was necessary, but they continue to demand: credits from the park must not be sold, and the forests must remain outside commercial schemes. In addition, the project included recreation zones, including car clubs and cycling trails, which raised further concerns: a national park must not turn into a place for racing.
Despite all the caveats, the creation of the park is a real step towards preserving one of Australia's most vulnerable symbols. The next stage is the development of a management plan that must balance conservation, employment and recreation, as well as continue expanding protected areas, including the forests in Pine Creek and other districts that have so far been excluded.
Protecting nature requires not only laws but also a willingness to abandon familiar funding models that put the economy above ecosystems.
