The NSW DPIE needs your help to conserve koalas and other local wildlife, to understand the impact of the 2019-20 bushfires and to assess trends in feral animals such as deer and fox.
In 2019, they released the NSW Community Wildlife Survey. The survey aimed to improve our understanding of the distribution of koalas and other mammals, including both native and introduced species, in New South Wales, to indicate how their populations have changed over time and to investigate what might be causing that change.
They ran the survey from May to December.
They have now reopened the survey to help them understand how our wildlife and introduced mammals are faring, and how they have been impacted by the 2019-20 bushfires.
More than ever, we need your sightings of koalas and other mammals from before and after the fires, as well as sightings from areas not affected by the fire.
The information you provide will build on findings from earlier community surveys, allowing us to compare mammal populations in 2006 with those in 2019-20. This data will help us decide the priority sites for action as part of the NSW Government’s Koala Strategy. It will also provide us with vital information about where mammals were affected by fire and where populations remain within and near the fire grounds.
The survey questions include
- which of the 10 target animals in the image gallery occur in your local area
- when you last saw the animals in your local area and if you think their numbers are increasing, decreasing or staying the same
- the health of the koalas in your local area and whether they have young (joeys)
- what you think are the main threats to koalas in your local area
- where in New South Wales you have seen any of the 10 target animals over the last 2 years.
The survey should take between 20 and 30 minutes to complete.
For more information, links to the tools that you need to use and to take the survey go to: