The Koala Prioritisation Project NSW commenced in 2015 and was funded under the Saving our Species Iconic Koala Project to provide support and strategic direction to future priorities in conservation actions for the koala. The project is one of several projects designed to support data driven (evidence based) decision making for koala conservation in NSW.

The two main spatial outputs of the Koala Prioritisation Project NSW are Areas of Regional Koala Significance (ARKS) and Functional Habitat.

The ARKS mapping has been designed to provide focus priorities for the profiling and analysis of the landscape values and threats for koala populations in NSW. The analysis is being undertaken at a state-wide scale; no attempt has been made to delineate fine-scale occupancy information.

The dataset should be only viewed at 1:100,000 scale or coarser. As the areas were designed only to provide an envelope for analysis, no relative significance for areas have been assigned. Finer scale information that may be available in local and regional scale analyses can provide more detailed occupancy and habitat suitability information.

The basis for this analysis has been occupancy information. No attempt has been made to incorporate habitat suitability or identify areas of unoccupied habitat. Habitat suitability has been considered as a koala value in later parts of the prioritisation process. The limitation following from this approach is that the recognition of Areas of Regional Significance is dependent on survey effort. Where active survey is limited (particularly in the west of NSW), identified Areas of Regional Koala Significance may be under-recognised. As more observation data are collected and collated, our understanding of the relative significance of koala occupied lands will evolve.

All Koala Habitat Information Base (KHIB) datasets are available for download below under 'Dataset Relationship'

For further information on the data layers and their development, please see the Koala Habitat Information Base Technical Guide.