After a decade of fighting, the Great Koala National Park is law — 475,000 hectares of it

New South Wales' parliament has passed the law creating the Great Koala National Park, adding more than 178,000 hectares of state forest to the existing parks estate to form a protected expanse of over 475,000 hectares on the mid-north coast — home to an estimated 12,000 koalas and more than 100 other threatened species, including greater gliders and powerful owls. The idea was first publicly backed in 2015; ecologists, First Nations communities, local campaigners and businesses spent more than a decade making it real. 'This is conservation at the scale nature needs,' said WWF-Australia CEO Dermot O'Gorman. 'Protecting hundreds of thousands of hectares of connected habitat will give koalas and other endangered species room to recover and adapt as the climate changes.' The package includes new Aboriginal ranger positions and support for workers and businesses affected by the transition.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: policy reform