NUMEROUS NEW PLANT SPECIES DISCOVERED IN CLARENCE VALLEY

Judging by the relatively low number of plant records from across the Clarence Valley, it seems the area has largely been ignored by ecologists in the past.

The large-scale land clearing and wetland draining that has occurred over the past 170 years, resulting in the loss of 95% of native vegetation across NSW’s largest coastal floodplain, could be one reason. Another could be the inaccessible nature of some hinterland areas.

Whatever the reason, the Natural Resource Audit Council studies conducted during the 1990s, and other subsequent research projects, have focussed attention to this previously under-explored region. As a result, numerous hitherto unrecorded occurrences of rare plants have been reported here, including a number of new species never recorded anywhere before.

Those plants, suspected as being undescribed, include an Asteraceae (Daisy) discovered at Pillar Valley some two years ago, and a Donkey Orchid, spotted by a member of the public at Shannon Creek a year later.

The discovery of two populations of a tree at Chambigne, closely related to White Beech, has attracted interest from botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), who are hoping to collect more flowering specimens so the species can be properly described.

Also, in the last two years, flowering specimens of two Bottlebrush species from the Coaldale area have defied attempts by RBG botanists to identify them, claiming they match nothing currently on record.

The Clarence Valley’s unique sandstone country has also yielded some surprises, with a grass species of the Setaria genus found at both Banyabba and Kooyong reserves, that specialists suggest could also be undescribed.

Only recently, a Wattle species was recorded in the Koukandowie Nature Reserve, another Sandstone area, that was first thought to be a disjunct occurrence of a Tablelands species. However, a number of anomalies combined to cast doubt on that identification. Another new species perhaps?

With a sad lack of official resources, describing these new species will likely depend on university students seeking a subject for a thesis, and sadly, some may never be described.

     - John Edwards

 

 Published in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent , 14 January, 2026.

 

CITIZEN SCIENTISTS AND FROGS

Biodiversity loss has been a growing concern for scientists and conservationists for years with gaps in knowledge being a major problem in determining the health status of many species.

A recent article in “The Conversation” highlighted the importance of citizen scientists in mapping biodiversity and improving knowledge of its status across the landscape.

Australian Museum researchers Grace Gillard and Jodi Rowley discussed the role of citizen scientists in recording frogs using the FrogID (www.frogid.net.au) smartphone app.

Globally frogs are one of the most threatened groups of animals. In Australia one in five species of frogs – almost 50 species – are threatened with extinction.  At least four species, including the unique gastric-breeding frogs, are now extinct and several other species, not seen for decades, are also feared extinct.   The greatest threats to frogs are disease, habitat loss and climate change. 

Gillard and Rowley analysed the 496,357 frog records logged on FrogID in NSW between 2017 and 2024.

As private land makes up the majority of the state and covers almost all habitat types, understanding of how frogs are faring on private land is vital to understanding the species’ health across the landscape.  Citizen scientists have been providing important data from private land as well as surveying public land (including national parks and other protected areas) more comprehensively than have professional scientists.

“Most of the NSW FrogID records come from urban and suburban areas with high human population density.  But the data showed an increasing number of landholders in regional and remote areas are using FrogID to record their local frogs.”

The researchers pointed out that obtaining data about frogs from these non-urban areas using traditional surveys was challenging for scientists because many frog species in arid and semi-arid areas only become active after heavy rains when these areas are often inaccessible.

There are 240 surviving frog species in Australia. 

Citizen scientists using FrogID are providing data to assist researchers in monitoring these frogs’ distribution and health on both private and public land – a major contribution to their survival.

-        Leonie Blain

Published in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent , 30 January, 2026. 

NSW's KOALA BASELINE SURVEY IS WRONG

NORTH EAST FOREST ALLIANCE 

MEDIA RELEASE 

6 February 2026 

A review of the NSW Government’s Koala baseline assessments for the North East Forest Alliance has found the Government’s models of Koala densities broad and inaccurate, with cleared paddocks near Kyogle claimed to have higher densities of Koalas than the Great Koala National Park, resulting in greatly inflated population estimates for NSW.

The NSW Government recently released the outcomes of their Koala baseline assessments, intended to identify koalas’ distribution and abundance across NSW, and to provide a baseline against which future population changes can be correlated. The outcome included models of Koalas’ distribution and densities, and a total NSW koala population estimate of around 274,000, which is over 10 times higher than most other estimates.

The review’s author, Dailan Pugh OAM, described the aims of the baseline survey to obtain accurate maps of Koala habitat and populations across NSW as important and worthy.

“Unfortunately the outputs of the $20 million project are too inaccurate to achieve its aims or  provide a baseline to measure future population changes against.

“The modelled koala densities have not adequately accounted for cleared land, identifying very high Koala numbers in farmers paddocks, resulting in misleading mapping and grossly inflated population estimates.

“The assessment utilised drone surveys to identify actual Koala densities at 384 sites across the whole of NSW, which is a very small sample.

“They primarily relied on recordings of male koalas calling at least once in the breeding season, over two weeks at 1,179 sites, to model Koala distributions and densities.

“This appears to have falsely inflated densities because it does not account for the fact that some males may be transients dispersing through poor quality or unsuitable habitat, therefore calls are not necessarily representative of good habitat or resident populations.

“They extrapolated their survey results across NSW using coarse mapping of aridity, distance to rivers, canopy height, Koala feed tree density and soil nitrogen, without  accounting for numerous other habitat attributes known to affect Koala densities.

“At the very least they should have excluded cleared paddocks from their model.

“Based on the model, the largest area of the highest density Koala habitat in NSW is to the north-east of Kyogle, with cleared paddocks shown to have higher densities of Koalas than found in the best habitat in the Great Koala National Park” Mr. Pugh said.