VIC Koala Management Strategy - Department of Sustainability and ...

Key Issues inKoala Management in VictoriaBefore developing a strategy for themanagement of Koalas in Victoria it is necessaryto identify key issues that influence Koalapopulation trends. This section describes 11 keyissues affecting Koala populations and theirmanagement in Victoria. It is followed by asection that presents the objectives to beachieved in order to adequately address eachkey issue, defines actions necessary to achieveeach objective and lists the lead agencies andtime-frames for their implementation.Issue 1. Defining, Rankingand Conserving HabitatKoalas are widespread in Victoria and occur across a range ofbiogeographical regions and habitats. They also occur on mostland tenures, including National Parks and other conservationreserves, State Forests, other Crown Land, and freehold land.An essential component of informed conservation planning isa detailed understanding of what constitutes habitat, and thedistribution and availability of that habitat. This knowledge islacking for the Koala in Victoria and a program of habitatdefinition and mapping would assist in planning for Koalaconservation.Examples of high quality Koala habitat - Coastal Manna Gumwoodland, Yellow Box woodland, River Red Gum forest.As a start to the process of documenting Koala habitatavailability, Parks Victoria undertook a GIS-based assessment ofthe extent and distribution of potential Koala habitat inVictoria (Centre for Environmental Management 2001). Thisassessment was based upon the distribution of EcologicalVegetation Classes (EVCs) containing eucalypts known to bebrowsed by Koalas. It provides a useful statewide overview ofpotentially suitable habitat.Tree species that occur naturally in Victoria and are knownto be browsed by the Koala are listed in Appendix 1. Giventhe level of taxonomic revision in the genus Eucalyptus inrecent years, it is likely that many newly described speciesare also eaten, so the list is almost certainly incomplete.The underlying geology and soil fertility may also play animportant role in determining the quality of Koala habitatthrough their effects on the levels of foliage nutrients andsecondary metabolites (Moore and Foley 2000). Thus, a treespecies may be readily eaten in one locality but not favouredat another.Mapping at the statewide scale is useful for obtainingan overview of the availability of habitat for Koalas, forexample, to indicate the distribution and extent of potentialrelease sites available for use during translocation programs.However, for land-use planning on a local scale, greaterprecision is needed in both habitat definition and mapping.For mapping habitat at a level useful for Local Government,the Koala Habitat Atlas project of the Australian KoalaFoundation provides a useful model (e.g. Phillips, et al.2000). This methodology combines detailed vegetationand soil mapping with a quantified measure of local Koalapreferences for browse tree species, to indicate habitatquality at the local level.There is also a need for further elucidation of theenvironmental factors that influence the selection ofindividual browse trees by Koalas, so that more sophisticatedmodels of Koala habitat quality can be developed andapplied to landuse planning (Moore and Foley 2000).Once an area has been recognised as important habitat forthe Koala, attention should focus on how best to ensure theconservation or enhancement of that habitat. The approachtaken will depend on land tenure and status. In Victoria,most Koala habitat and most Koalas occur on Crown Land.Freehold land has mostly been cleared of native vegetationand, where Koalas persist on freehold, they are often at low8