‘A drop in the ocean’: government’s $50m koala pledge won’t tackle root cause of decline

The announcement took place in a fashion Australians have come to expect in election years, with the prime minister, Scott Morrison, cuddling up to a furry marsupial while promising record investment.

This time it was a plan for the Australian government to spend $50m to improve the protection and recovery of one of the nation's most-loved animals, the koala.

Fifty million for a single species is certainly significant, particularly when you consider $10m in grants is to be shared between 100 animals and plants the government identified last year as priorities in a new threatened species strategy.

But whether or not it makes a difference in turning around the fortunes of an animal - that a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry found could be extinct in that state by 2050 - could depend on multiple outstanding policies and decisions that are due to be settled in 2022.

"Money alone isn't the issue to save the koala," says Alexia Wellbelove, a senior campaign manager at Humane Society International (HSI).

"You need a strong conservation framework."

Much has been said about koala recovery since bushfires burned millions of hectares of land in Australia's black summer fires in 2019-20.