Deborah Tabart’s 36-year passion for protecting koalas and their habitat shows no signs of waning.
This is despite the constant struggle for action on the issues threatening the future of arguably Australia’s most-loved animal – a challenge that would have worn down most people.
The Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) Chair admits there have been times when she could have given up because the challenge seemed insurmountable.
She began working for the AKF in February 1998, when her reputation as an effective fundraiser led to her being offered the role of the organisation’s first employee.
“When I got the job, I knew nothing about the plight of the koala,” Ms Tabart OAM said.
“I was told to raise money for koalas and fund research. Because I had been a fundraiser my whole life, I just had to follow my instincts.
“It was pretty easy, in a way, to raise money for koalas because everyone loves them.”
During her early years with the AKF, Ms Tabart became aware of the need to map the koala population and their habitats, which she initially thought would take “a couple of years.”
“We got some computers and started mapping, but it took 23 years and about $20 million to map the whole geographic range of the koala,” she said.
Deborah Tabart has been working to save koalas for 36 years.
Ms Tabart, an RACQ member for 35 years, loves being on the road, looking for evidence of koalas in native landscapes from Cairns to Adelaide.
“You couldn’t do this job if you didn’t love the bush, or didn’t feel comfortable in the bush, and if you weren’t committed not just to koalas, but to all creatures, great and small,” she said.
“But there have been times in my career when I’ve thought it was too hard and I should walk away.”
For now, her fight continues with a focus on getting the Federal Government to introduce legislation to protect koala habitats from further loss.
The AKF has prepared a Koala Protection Act that focuses on protecting trees. It believes existing state and federal legislation, that concentrates on the koala and fails to adequately protect its habitat, is not effective.
“I think that if there were a Koala Protection Act, with a decent law that says, ‘This is primary habitat, and if you want to do anything here, you have to do all your environmental work before we give you the approvals,’ it would make a difference,” Ms Tabart said.
“The AKF has always wanted to work with industry to minimise impacts on habitat, and I think that is possible, but I don’t see it happening at the moment.”
Ms Tabart said the Federal Government listed koalas as endangered in Queensland, New South Wales, and the Australian Capital Territory in 2022 under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Under the act, threatened species are classified as extinct, extinct in the wild, critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, or conservation dependent.
She said South East Queensland – where she believes the koala is critically endangered and one step away from extinct in the wild – was an example of the devastating impacts of habitat loss.
“When I got my job in 1988, there were about 50,000 koalas in South East Queensland, and now there are likely to be fewer than a thousand,” Ms Tabart said.
“In my whole career, I have not seen one piece of habitat saved. Development is incremental, and it’s like death by a thousand cuts.”
Ms Tabart said RACQ members who wanted to look for koalas when traveling could email the AKF for suggestions on where they might find them. They could then let the AKF know if they saw any.
Learn more at savethekoala.com.
