‘I need your help saving koalas’: how Australians banded together to build wildlife corridors

Bangalow Koalas has been connecting fragmented habitat with stretches of eucalyptus trees. The marsupials are increasingly at risk of disappearing from Australia’s east coast altogether. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

In 2016 a friend phoned Linda Sparrow about a 400-metre stretch of koala trees on the western edge of Bangalow, a small regional town in northern New South Wales.

The landscape in the region had long since been cut back by loggers and farmers, and there were precious few eucalyptus trees left to provide refuge for koalas looking for food or shelter.