Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00555:body:0:p52
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00555
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Character Range: 168305–171324

al. 2007; Woodward et al. 2008). Koalas are also known to retain home ranges in selectively logged coupes (Kavanagh et al. 2007).
Long-term research on these aspects, the impacts of the bushfires in 2019–2020, nutritional quality of forests and demographics is ongoing in New South Wales forests (NRM Ministerial Council 2009). Between 2015 and 2017, the NSW Department of Primary Industries forest scientists undertook a large-scale study on Koala occupancy in the forests of north-east New South Wales, including the response of Koala to timber harvesting. Koala occupancy was not influenced by timber harvesting intensity, time since harvesting, land tenure, landscape harvesting extent or old-growth forest extent (Law et al. 2018).
The NSW Natural Resources Commission is undertaking independent research to better understand the response of Koalas to different types of harvesting in State forests on the North Coast of New South Wales. This work will also investigate how Koalas and their habitat are responding after the 2019–2020 bushfires. The report that synthesises the findings of this research was released in October 2021.
Under the Regional Forest Agreements, each state has a set of compliance rules and minimum standards for conducting native forestry operations on public land to deliver ecologically sustainable forest management.
Recently harvested eucalypt forest, south-eastern NSW. Image: © DAWE.

Altered fire regimes
Fire regimes across the Koala's range have been altered over the past two centuries by both changes in burning practices and the effects of climate change. Projected climate change, resulting in a warmer and drier environment over much of Australia will affect fire regimes (intensity, scale, frequency and seasonality) and increase the incidence of extreme fire-danger days (BOM and CSIRO 2020; Dowdy 2020; Sharples et al. 2016). The most significant changes are predicted for sclerophyll-dominated vegetation such as forests of south-eastern Australia (Williams et al. 2009), in which the Koala occurs. Climate change has complex effects on vegetation production through elevated CO2 (section 25, for discussion on potential impact on habitat quality), effects on fuel and fire weather, and ignitions, which collectively will influence future fire regimes (Williams et al. 2009).
Altered fire regimes, together with climate change, will have complex feedback interactions with biodiversity, both positive and negative (Williams et al. 2009). Understanding the impact of fire regimes on individual species' responses is complex because of the individual nature and context in space and time of any one fire event and the complexity of associated environmental variables (Whelan 2002; Williams et al. 2009). This complex response, along with balancing the need of social and economic factors, makes managing fire risk for species conservation challenging, now and into the future (William et al. 2009; Clarke 2008).
Of major concern for biodiversity are large infrequent fires