MEDIA RELEASE
6 October 2025
Blicks River Guardians has just been awarded the prestigious TOGA
(Triumph Over Greed) Award from the North Coast Environment Council (NCEC) for
their record-length successful forest protection actions (The Clouds Creek
Glider Reviver) to protect the "Clouds Creek Greater Glider
Sanctuary".
The Glider Reviver stopped industrial logging at Clouds Creek for 420 working
days (January 2024-September 2025) and ensured that these globally significant
forests were protected from logging. This was the second biggest block of
native forest ever attempted to be logged in this region by the Forestry
Corporation of NSW.
Blicks River Guardians protected these remarkable forests from logging and they were recently placed under a logging moratorium and identified for inclusion in the Great Koala National Park by the Minns Government. We warmly welcome this outcome and look forward to urgent gazettal of the National Park to allow the process of repair to begin and to commence the rebuilding of fauna populations decimated by massive recent logging across the Dorrigo Plateau.
Travelling from the highlands of the Gumbaynggirr Nation on the Dorrigo
Plateau to the lowlands of the Bundjalung Nation south of Casino key members of
Blicks River Guardians, Meredith Stanton and Mark Graham, were honoured to
receive this award. This was particularly the case considering that the
previous recipient (in 2022) was a leading conservation visionary, the man who
first proposed the Great Koala National Park, Ashley Love.
“The NCEC's TOGA award
recognises the efforts of every one of us who held space at the Glider Reviver
over the 84-week campaign on beautiful Gumbaynggirr country... and all those
cheering us on!,” said Meredith Stanton,
“It is not very often that grass roots community triumphs over corporate greed, yet in this instance, so satisfying to know that local koalas and greater gliders, our river systems and all future generations will be the beneficiaries of our sustained efforts to save Clouds Creek greater glider forests as intact habitat,”
“Unlogged, these catchments forests have a 15–20-year head start towards climate resilience. That's why we need to stop logging all our forests now and begin the restoration process inside the 476,000-hectare national park.”
Blicks River Guardians extends the deepest gratitude and respect to all our many partners in our ongoing actions to ensure a healthy living future for the Blicks River. The Blicks River is the catchment draining the western parts of the Dorrigo Plateau, a major tributary of the Nymboida River. This river provides drinking water to about 100 000 coastal residents between Sawtell and Iluka.
Mark Graham said, “Ending logging in the catchments will prevent extinctions, ensure our region and its economy will have the clean and adequate water needed for the survival of all industries including agriculture, fisheries, retail and other services and tourism industries, will provide generations of work needing substantial labour inputs over decades to come, to stabilise our regional climate and capture and store carbon in the landscape. Our forests provide us with the only path to a safe and viable future,”
“Forests deliver water security, destroying them with industrial logging
takes away the water security that we all need. We must now switch immediately
from logging and destroying public native forests for a massive loss to
taxpayers to the restoration and repair of forests.”
Blicks River Guardians hope all of the Great Koala National Park will be
protected from mining too, but particularly the drinking water supply
catchments on the Dorrigo Plateau which must be made into National Park or
Nature Reserve because lower classes of reserves (such as State Conservation
Areas) allow mining and there are growing concerns across the community about
poisonous mining proposals under consideration on public lands in this
catchment.
- Blicks River Guardians
