A coal miner and a zoo may sound like strange bedfellows but an ambitious high-tech plan to map koala locations and educate children about the endangered marsupial has brought the two together.
Symbio Wildlife Park has received a $470,000 boost from South32 Illawarra Metallurgical Coal to support koala conservation work in the Illawarra and Macarthur regions.
Symbio Wildlife Park marketing manager Kevin Fallon and Illawarra Metallurgical Coal (IMC) vice president operations Peter Baker held a press briefing at Symbio on Friday, March 24 to announce the joint initiative.
The three-year partnership between Symbio and South32 IMC includes plans for Symbio staff to participate in a new research program, which will use drone-mounted thermal imaging cameras to map koala locations in Illawarra bushland to gain a better understanding of local populations and their movements.
In addition, a new immersive conservation educational precinct will be developed at Symbio Wildlife Park, with the potential to help educate more than 200,000 park visitors per year about the importance of protecting koalas and other endangered wildlife.
A new not-for-profit Symbio Wildlife Park Conservation Foundation will also be established. Its aim will be to support “a sustainable future for koalas and other endangered Australian wildlife”, by focussing on breed-and-release programs, acquisition of land for habitat, and tree planting.
Symbio has plans to launch its augmented reality (AR) wildlife educational app for schools – KOALAR – to help students learn more about koalas and other Australian wildlife.
Mr Baker said South32 IMC was “pleased to partner with Symbio Wildlife Park to support these great new initiatives”.
“The big part for us has been twofold: one, just being able to get involved with wildlife conservation, it’s been tremendous and what a great partner to have in Symbio Wildlife Park.
“And two: the work that Symbio do with education, particularly kindergarten through to year six, perfect timing to get the kids involved [in conservation].”
He said: “We think this is a first step in probably a long partnership working with conservation groups in general, but in particular Symbio.”
Mr Fallon said the Illawarra and Macarthur regions have some of the most genetically pure koalas in Australia.
“This new partnership directly enables us to fast-track important conservation measures and do even more to help protect the species at a time where it has never been so critical, whilst completely changing the way in which children are educated around wildlife.
“As well as hosting some key koala habitat areas, our regions have deep cultural ties to the koala stretching back thousands of years with the Dharawal people, and then much later, the first koalas collected for the scientific study were found at Mount Kembla, in 1803.”
He said: “This partnership means more to us, koalas and education than I can possibly express.”
