After more than 14 hours of debate and around 160 amendments, the New South Wales parliament has passed the law that creates the Great Koala National Park, ABC News reports.
The park stretches across 478,000 hectares of the state’s Mid North Coast, between Kempsey and Grafton. It stitches existing national parks together with more than 178,000 hectares of former state forest and Crown land, making it the second-largest national park in NSW. Koalas are at its heart, but it also safeguards more than 100 other species of plants and animals.
Logging on the land had already been paused, and more than 117,000 hectares have been registered for carbon credits for ending native forest logging. Local campaigner Ashley Love, who has pushed for the park for more than ten years, called the vote “a big step forward”.
Source: ABC News