Original Forest, Wildlife Sightings and Scats: Community and Scientists Working Together to Protect Koalas Living in Intensely Managed Parcels of Forest Within the Proposed Great Koala National Park in New South Wales, Australia

.The koala is endangered across most of its range. Despite this status, populations in core forest habitats in northern New South Wales (NSW) continue to decline. To improve conservation out-comes for the species in the wild, the Great Koala National Park has been proposed. While the process of establishing this park continues, ongoing forest harvesting operations exert continu-ous pressure on koalas and their habitat within the proposed footprint of the park. We report on how community stakeholders are collaborating with scientists to identify areas of high koala habitat value that are currently subject to timber harvesting. Original trees and remnants were identified using historical aerial photography, orthorectified and matched against current NSW Government imagery (SIX Maps); composite mosaics of photographic sheets and closeups (Quantum GIS) were imported into Google Earth Pro. Koala drone surveys, habitat ground-truthing and on-ground scat and koala surveys of 120 ha involving various community stakeholders were conducted in December 2024 and revealed 25 koalas, ne-cessitating the reclassification of this area from plantation to prime koala habitat. Here, as in many other plantations in NSW, the findings of this study indicate significant numbers of original trees that are part of highly diverse nutrient-rich sites attractive to koalas. This leads to the conclusion that that the exclusion of specific areas of the proposed park to allow for ongoing logging is inconsistent with recognised koala protection strategies. We conclude that Koala protection needs to consider the integrity of the reserve system in its entirety and be accorded the requisite status of World Heritage.