Bandjalang rangers celebrate Boorubee return to Minyumai

Indigenous rangers on Bandjalang Country are celebrating the return of healthy koalas to the Minyumai Indigenous Protected Area in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, six years after fears the population had been wiped out by bushfire.

Around 90 per cent of the 2,163-hectare Minyumai IPA, south of Evans Head, was burned in the 2019-20 bushfire season. Rangers feared the resident koalas, known as Boorubee, had perished. The last sighting before the fires had been in 2018, and for the Bandjalang people the absence was felt deeply.

Bandjalang Elder Auntie Bonnie Wilson said the protection of Boorubee was knowledge handed down through generations. “My great grandfather was a revered Elder who knew many of the old stories handed down. One story was that Boorubee were never to be hunted, but protected” Auntie Bonnie said.

A breakthrough came in June 2023, when a wildlife camera set up by rangers captured an image of a single koala the rangers nicknamed “Rubee”. Senior Minyumai Ranger Maitland Wilson recalled the moment of discovery. “We were going through the photos and then we came across the koala and we were freaking out. We had no idea they were here. We were just so stoked. I knew then and there that I wanted to protect them” Ms Wilson said.

The discovery launched the Boorubee Monitoring and Recovery Project, a women-led ranger initiative supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature Australia. So far rangers have planted 2,500 koala food and shelter trees, mapped existing koala habitat, cleared invasive lantana, and conducted cultural burns to reduce fuel loads and ease wildlife movement through Country.

Minyumai Ranger Supervisor Harry Wilson said cultural burning was central to the work and to identity. The practice connects rangers with Country and with the methods used by their ancestors for thousands of years.

Thermal drone surveys have added a contemporary tool to traditional knowledge. Night flights identified six Boorubee in 2024 and nine in 2025. Scat analysis found Minyumai’s koalas are chlamydia-free, a significant outcome given that infection rates in some northern NSW koala populations approach 80 per cent.

Bandjalang language teacher and cultural advisor at Minyumai, Simone Barker, said the IPA functioned as a sanctuary. “Boorubee are important to all Aboriginal people. Minyumai is a sanctuary for them. It’s a place where we can keep them protected from roads, from people, from dogs. Hopefully they’ll thrive here. That’s what we want,” Ms Barker said.

The Minyumai IPA was dedicated in 2011 and supports 447 native plant species and 28 threatened species, including the greater glider and grey-headed flying fox. The Boorubee project demonstrates how Indigenous-led conservation, combining cultural knowledge with technology, can deliver outcomes that have eluded mainstream approaches.