Aboriginal traditional owners have joined with more than 100 people from local community groups, locals and residents to protest the logging at Mumbulla State Forest in South East NSW.

Three traditional owners led a peaceful protest this week saying,
“ We, the traditional owners of Mumbulla Mountain, are distressed that woodchip logging is taking place on part of our sacred land. The land should be handed over to us to care for it, our sacred sites and the animals that live here. We need to preserve it for our culture and our future generations”.

Forestry breaches have been reported to the NSW Department of Environment by protesters this week.

These breaches include the failure to mark and reserve habitat trees and 'recruitment' trees.

Last month, a Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water survey found a small but healthy population of up to 50 koalas, including females and their young, living in native forest earmarked for logging.

We must act now! We cannot let this small but significant colony of koalas face imminent extinction.

Please ask for Premier Keneally's urgent intervention to end the logging in the home of the South East's koalas. Let the NSW Government know how appalled you are that it is willing to abandon our iconic koalas and their native forest in return for a quick, unsustainable profit.

Here's three ways you can help save the koalas:

1. Contact the Premier's office and express your disappointment and opposition to the start of logging.
Premier Kristina Keneally's Ministerial Office
Address:Level 40 Governor Macquarie Tower, 1 Farrer Place, Sydney NSW 2000
Phone: (02) 9228 5239
Fax: (02) 9228 3934
Email: premier@www.nsw.gov.au

2. Contact your local member of state parliament - ask them if they're aware of the beginning of logging in the South East forest and ask them what they're going to do about it!

You can find out your local electoral district here , then look up contact details for your local member of parliament here .

3. Let the NSW Government know the community does not support the destruction of our native forests and iconic animals. Pass on this email, write Letters to the Editor of the SMH and your local paper, blog, tweet and tell your friends on Facebook. The more pressure we can maintain on our leaders, the more likely they will do something about it!

Please support our efforts to save these special koalas and help protect NSW's unique biodiversity.

Recent media

Read the ABC's story about the start of logging and watch a great video, Logging puts koala habitat under threat .

Read Prue Acton and Lee Rhiannon's comments on the "environmental vandalism" of logging this forest in Logging starts, koala battle goes on by Jennie Curtin (SMH, 30/03/2010).