12,000 koalas just got a park of their own — 475,000 hectares of it

After more than a decade of campaigning, the New South Wales Parliament has passed the law creating the Great Koala National Park. More than 178,000 hectares of former state forest on the Mid North Coast — home to an estimated 12,000 koalas, 36,000 greater gliders and more than 100 threatened species — will join existing reserves in a connected protected estate of more than 475,000 hectares. Native forest logging in the new park land ends, cutting the state's native timber harvest by about a fifth. Conservationists, scientists, Traditional Owners and local communities campaigned for this together; the park they won is larger than the one originally promised.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: policy reform