Community spotlight: Katrina Jeffery, landholder
Katrina Jeffery has been restoring koala habitat on her property, Koala Gardens at Tuckurimba, for the past 5 years. The response she has observed is astounding.
'This is no longer where I live, this is how I live.
In 2010, my late husband and I found ourselves custodians of this seriously beautiful piece of land to the south of Lismore. We knew we had found paradise.
Yet as I look back at photos of how things were, I realise it looked dead compared to the teeming life it supports now.
In 2015, I secured funding through the 25th Anniversary Landcare Grants and had a professional property management plan developed. This was the real key to success. It provided the blueprint for my professional regeneration team to re-establish a healthy ecosystem.
We planted 1,000 trees through funded projects, and 3,000 trees have regenerated naturally from the mature forest red gums and pink bloodwoods.
The land now teems with a host of birds, reptiles and insects, as well as koalas. Swamp wallabies love the dense habitat too.
I record daily data on the koala colony, identifying each animal by its nose pattern. I take note of pouch- and back-young.
The results today are astounding. In 2015, there might have been only a dozen koala sightings in the month. April 2017 saw the count top 100. March 2019 is a new record, with 174 sightings of 12 individual koalas. Three of these are mature females with joeys in pouch.
When I had the property assessed for our conservation covenant, we identified habitat for 14 threatened species. We have already seen 5 of these species on the property, including koala, hairy joint grass, little lorikeet, wompoo fruit dove and squirrel glider. All of this on only 5.6 hectares!
I have learned a lot about koalas and their issues while volunteering with Friends of the Koala in Lismore. I am passionate about observing and documenting koala behaviour and their response to habitat regeneration. I’ll talk anything koala all day long.'