The Role of Local Governance Tools in Koala Conservation: A Comparative Assessment of Koala Plans of Management in Australia

Despite being listed as endangered under Australia’s federal environment protection statute, the koala continues to face significant population decline in many parts of its range. While debates rage about the ineffectiveness of Australia’s federal environment protection laws, this article draws attention to the contribution local governance makes to koala conservation. It aims to link the local with the global by presenting a comparative assessment of five Koala Plans of Management (KPoMs) from New South Wales. A KPoM is a policy instrument that is typically developed according to land use planning concepts. Shifting the scale of consideration to the local imbues the work with significant specificity. However, exploring local policy development aimed at protecting koalas is likely to be translatable to communities around the world, as they grapple with how to protect local threatened species. The study is innovative in that it compares KPoMs according to landscape approach principles: ecosystem integrity, effective planning, and strong governance. These principles are embedded in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The comparative method involves a multidisciplinary panel of scholars who individually evaluated each KPoM according to landscape approach criteria. The evaluative process found that KPoMs demonstrated efforts to adopt conservation-oriented approaches. However, some of the institutional and governance arrangements limited the capacity to operationalise integrated landscape and ecology conservation principles. The article concludes by suggesting how KPoMs might achieve more holistic engagement with local threats to koala populations using a landscape approach.