The Bunyah Koala Project

The Bunyah Koala Project We aim to protect and grow our local Koala population by making our properties a safe haven by insta

01/07/2026

Possum Magic

28/06/2026

Theres a bear in there.

For decades Australia's bushfire debate has largely focused on how we respond to fires once they start.More aircraft.Mor...
10/06/2026

For decades Australia's bushfire debate has largely focused on how we respond to fires once they start.

More aircraft.
More hazard reduction burns.
More fire trucks.
More emergency funding.

All important. But are we asking the wrong question?

Instead of simply asking how we fight bushfires, perhaps we should also be asking:

**What kind of landscape naturally resists catastrophic bushfires?**

Many people are surprised to learn that before European settlement, large areas of Australia's east coast were covered by extensive networks of rainforest, wet forest, moist forest, riparian forest and other high-moisture vegetation communities. These ecosystems stretched across much of the Great Dividing Range, coastal escarpments, river systems and high-rainfall regions from Queensland through New South Wales and into Victoria.

Unlike dry forests, these wetter ecosystems generally burned very infrequently. Some rainforest communities may have gone centuries between significant fires. Their dense canopies, higher humidity, cooler temperatures and moist soils created natural barriers to fire spread and provided refuges for wildlife during major fire events.

Over the past 200 years, many of these systems have been cleared, fragmented or degraded. In many areas, the result has been greater connectivity of highly flammable vegetation across the landscape.

The Black Summer fires highlighted something important. While many ecosystems burned intensely, numerous rainforest remnants and wet forest refuges survived, demonstrating their natural resistance to fire under all but the most extreme conditions.

This raises an important question:

Could restoring rainforest, moist forest and wet forest ecosystems become part of Australia's long-term bushfire strategy?

Not as a replacement for firefighting, hazard reduction or emergency management, but as a complementary approach that addresses the problem at its source by building more resilient landscapes.

If we are serious about reducing the risk of future megafires, perhaps the conversation needs to expand beyond how we fight fires and include how we redesign landscapes to make catastrophic fires less likely in the first place.

🌿 Ever wondered what happens when steep country, stubborn weeds, koalas, cattle, and carbon credits all collide? 🐨🐄🌏Come...
24/03/2026

🌿 Ever wondered what happens when steep country, stubborn weeds, koalas, cattle, and carbon credits all collide? 🐨🐄🌏

Come and see for yourself at our Bunyah Koalas Open Day!

📅 Friday, 27 March
⏰ 9:00am – 12:00pm

We’ll be sharing what we’ve been working on, what’s working (and what’s not), and answering any questions you might have along the way.

☕ Morning tea is on us – just bring your curiosity!

👉 Spots are limited, so make sure you register via the QR code in the flyer to secure your place.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Ever wondered what happens when steep country, stubborn weeds, koalas, cattle, and carbon credits all collide? 🐨🌱🐄🌏Come ...
10/03/2026

Ever wondered what happens when steep country, stubborn weeds, koalas, cattle, and carbon credits all collide? 🐨🌱🐄🌏
Come see for yourself! Join us at Bunyah Koalas as we show how we transformed tough, unproductive land into a thriving carbon farm — boosting wildlife habitat, helping the environment, and creating a new income stream 💚🌳💰 (without totally losing our sanity... mostly 😂).
Thanks to the NSW Government’s Living Carbon program and DAFF’s Support Plantation Establishment Program, we turned good intentions into trees in the ground! 🙌🌲
Expect trees, creeks, critters, carbon chat, and a few honest lessons learned along the way. 🦘🌿💬
Address provided on registration 📍
Morning tea is on us! 🫖🍰
Bring your curiosity — questions welcome! 🤔✨
Register via the QR code or Link: https://events.humanitix.com/bunyah-koalas-open-day

🌳 Why We Still Believe in Native Hardwoods 🌳We often hear the argument that we don’t need native hardwoods anymore — tha...
01/02/2026

🌳 Why We Still Believe in Native Hardwoods 🌳

We often hear the argument that we don’t need native hardwoods anymore — that modern houses are built from cheap pine or manufactured products, so hardwoods are a thing of the past.

We don’t buy that.

Most structural timber today comes from monoculture pine plantations — ecological deserts that provide very little habitat while the trees are growing. After harvest, the timber is chemically treated with preservatives to stop termites and rot, leaving a long-term legacy of toxic materials that can’t be burned or recycled at end-of-life.

Manufactured timbers aren’t much better. They rely on chemical resins and glues, are difficult to recycle, and often shift environmental impacts to the disposal stage rather than solving them.

🌱 Now let’s talk carbon.
Native hardwoods grown in mixed-species plantations don’t just store carbon — they store more of it, for longer. Hardwoods are denser, live longer, and lock carbon into both standing forests and durable timber products far beyond the life of most softwoods. Pine grows fast, but it’s harvested young and re-released sooner. Hardwood carbon stays put.

At Bunyah Koalas, we advocate for mixed hardwood plantations grown from local-provenance seed because they:
• Support real biodiversity while growing
• Store more carbon, long-term
• Don’t require toxic chemical treatments
• Produce durable timber with a safer end-of-life
• Restore landscapes instead of simplifying them

Sustainable forestry doesn’t have to mean choosing between timber or nature. Done properly, it can do both.

This is why we keep backing native hardwoods — not as a throwback, but as a smarter, future-focused solution 🌏💚

😂 It’s a Play School moment…🎶 There’s a bear in there… 🎶Yep — I love a good dad joke.
10/01/2026

😂 It’s a Play School moment…

🎶 There’s a bear in there… 🎶

Yep — I love a good dad joke.

🌱 Big News — Our First Carbon Credits Have Landed! 🌱Following on from our earlier updates about the regenerative work ha...
08/01/2026

🌱 Big News — Our First Carbon Credits Have Landed! 🌱

Following on from our earlier updates about the regenerative work happening across Bunyah, we’re excited to share that we’ve officially received our first issuance of carbon credits under our 100-hectare native forest regeneration project.

This milestone represents years of careful stewardship, ecological restoration, and a commitment to letting Country heal. It also reinforces what we’ve been saying in past posts — healthy forests hold real value, both ecologically and economically.

Here’s the standout point:
The revenue generated per hectare from carbon is already significantly higher than what we could achieve from traditional cattle grazing.

That means:
🌿 Stronger incentives to regenerate native habitat
🐨 Better long-term outcomes for koalas and other natives
🌏 Greater landscape resilience
💚 A more stable economic foundation for our community-led conservation model

We’ve taken a practical, balanced approach to land use. Steep, low-productivity country is now dedicated to carbon forestry, while cattle continue to graze the gentler slopes. In simple terms — if a tractor couldn’t safely slash it, it now grows carbon instead.

We still run cattle across around 100 hectares of gently sloping land, and we plan to continue this mixed model. Diversifying income strengthens resilience — for the land and for the people caring for it.

A huge thank you to everyone who has supported this journey — volunteers, neighbours, and supporters near and far. Your belief in this project is helping create a landscape where koalas, forests and local families can thrive together.

We also extend a big thank you to our financial supporters, including the NSW Government via the Living Carbon grant and the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife.

📅 For those interested, we’ll be holding an open day in the first half of this year — a chance to walk the country, see the regeneration firsthand, and learn more about how the project works. More details soon.

A Rumble in the Jungle
07/01/2026

A Rumble in the Jungle

Address

585 Manning Hill Road
Bunyah, NSW

Telephone

+61412450226

Website

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