A tradeoff we must accept for now

September 29, 2025

Professor Brendan Mackey and Professor David Lindenmayer are right to question the NSW Government’s condition on declaring the Great Koala NP. The park is home to more than 150 threatened species, including the greater glider. With habitat loss, disease, bushfires, climate change, vehicle strikes, and dog attacks, koalas are now listed as endangered in NSW and nationally.

However, the government’s condition — that the park must first be registered as a carbon project under the Improved Native Forest Management Method — would allow major emitters to buy offsets under the Safeguard Mechanism. It’s a Catch-22, but given the plight of threatened species, it seems a trade-off we should accept, at least for now.

As Mackey and Lindenmayer note, a carbon price is the most cost-effective market mechanism to reduce fossil fuel emissions. But, if the park commitment meets carbon credit integrity standards — additional, measurable, independently verified, and supported by strong governance and transparency — similar projects could “help secure both biodiversity and climate gains.” Penny van Oosterzee writes in The Monthly that high-integrity carbon credits remain the “only serious vehicle we’ve got for conservation and restoration.” To abandon them now would be, in her words, an “eco own goal of epic proportions.”