Ensuring Koalas have a home

Ensuring the continuation of biodiversity in places we work is a critical part of our sustainability commitment – because it’s not just land we’re using, it’s habitat for some of the world’s most unique and precious animals and plants.

Having the right partners makes it easier to achieve our sustainability goals, and now our team at our Illawarra Metallurgical Coal have started working with the State Government in a bio-banking scheme it developed to address the loss of biodiversity values, including threatened species from habitat degradation and loss. It’s a way to generate credits that can be sold to offset the impact of certain activities, or retired to ensure long term conservation of the area in question.

Under the bio-bank scheme, in 2017 we were able to contribute 84 hectares of land that is home to critically endangered ecological communities and species, including koalas, to conservation in perpetuity, and bio-banking credits used to provide financial security for conservation of the property. 

This is the first step across 163 hectares of our land that is allocated for conservation in the Illawarra region, which we’re pleased to say will help re-establish threatened ecosystems and protect endangered populations of species across the southern Sydney Catchment of New South Wales.