FOOD FOR THE FUTURE

Recent news that koalas in New South Wales will be extinct by 2050 unless drastic action is taken to arrest habitat loss makes depressing reading.

Luckily, prospects for koalas in South Australia aren’t nearly so bleak. However, it doesn’t take much for the picture to change - half of Kangaroo Island’s sizeable koala population was wiped out by the bush fires in January this year.

At Forktree we want to do our bit for koalas. Amongst the saplings we are planting are rough-barked manna gums, one of the species of eucalypt favoured by them. We will concentrate our manna gums in one half of the property so as to create a suitable habitat for koalas - a minimum of 5-10 hectares of appropriate tree cover is required to create a viable breeding and feeding area.

We know it will be several decades before our manna gums will be of any use to them, but it feels good to be planting food for the koalas of the future. It’s slow cooking at its best.