The 2024 photo of the koala was spotted in Jacka. Photo: NatureMapr.
A dead koala has been found in Taylor, next to the second stage of the new suburb of Jacka, which has been on hold since October 2024 when a koala was spotted in tree.
The koala was spotted in grassy box-gum woodland in Jacka, but a government spokesperson said it was not known if the dead koala was the same animal.
The Jacka koala was the first found in the wild in the ACT for four years, and at the time put a cloud over the development of Canberra’s northernmost suburb.
A member of the public spotted the koala and posted a photo to the online citizen science platform NatureMapr.
The exact location was suppressed for the animal’s protection, but it was within an area slated for a major housing project.
The government spokesperson said that on 18 September, ACT Wildlife told the government it had collected a dead koala after a report from a member of the public.
The ACT’s Chief Veterinary Officer collected and inspected the koala but could not determine a cause of death or whether it was the same one identified in 2024.
Since the sighting in late 2024, the government has conducted additional surveys to determine if other koalas are in the area or if this is a lone animal outside its normal habitat.
“This is the first finding of a koala in the area since the original sighting reported in October 2024,” the spokesperson said.
The SLA was now conducting further surveys for a Self-Assessment under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
The area where work has now stopped. Image: SLA.
The Self-Assessment would evaluate whether the Jacka development would significantly impact nationally protected matters and help decide whether a further referral is required to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
The spokesperson said methods to locate possible koalas in the area included acoustic monitoring, scent detection dogs, thermal drone flights, spotlighting and thermally assisted ground surveys, and vegetation assessments.
The Self-Assessment was expected to be completed by January 2026 to inform the government’s next steps.
The SLA would work with the Conservator of Flora and Fauna to determine what measures to take in response to the findings.
ACT Conservation Council Executive Director Simon Copland urged the ACT Government to refer the matter under the EPBC Act, which would require further environmental assessments to determine if it qualifies as an area of environmental significance.
Dr Copland said this could affect whether the development went ahead, the nature of the development and what the government could do to better protect the potential habitat in the area.
“At the time [last year] when it was sighted, we proactively called for the government to halt that development, and we’re glad to see that it’s doing so,” he said.
“Koalas are increasingly heading towards being an endangered species, and we should be doing what we can to protect their habitat, and if we have habitat in the ACT, we need to be protecting it.”
Dr Copland said it was really hard to know if there were more koalas in the area because they were a unique species, moving around in a way that made them often very hard to spot.
But the finding did show that it was an area that koalas had used, he said.
“It’s an area that is obvious potential habitat, and one of the things we also need to be thinking about here is not just its current status, but what its future potential status is,” Dr Copland said.
“The ACT Government has a koala management plan that talks about the potential reintroduction of koalas into the Territory, but we can’t reintroduce koalas if we don’t have viable habitat.
“If this is an area of viable habitat, it’s something we should be looking to protect, even for its future benefits.”
The koala has been listed as endangered in the ACT since 2023, with the last sighting in 2021 in Oaks Estate. A few years earlier, in 2017, one was also spotted crossing the road near Pialligo Avenue near the Canberra Airport.
Before that, the last time wild koalas were recorded in the ACT was in 1992, in the Kowen Escarpment Nature Reserve.
Dr Kara Youngentob, a koala habitat expert from the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society, told Region last year that it was unlikely the Jacka koala had been simply passing through.
“Koalas don’t have a lot of fat reserves, and they have a really low-energy diet, so they can’t travel very far without feeding, so it would be in an area where they could eat,” she said.
“Koalas also don’t disperse often – it’s generally a once-in-a-lifetime thing, if at all, and some koalas stay in the areas they were born their entire lives.”
Dr Youngentob said the koala may have been one of possibly multiple individuals living in the area.
The proposed next stage of Jacka is within Block 9 of Section 17, Jacka. No blocks in the proposed next stage of Jacka have been released or sold.
Jacka will be home to nearly 1800 people when complete.
