The Minns government has criticised the previous Coalition government for failing to accurately count koala numbers in New South Wales.
For the past month, a major surveying exercise of the endangered animals has been taking place at 1,000 sites across the state.
It's uncovered a new population of 42 koalas at Coolah Tops, north west of Sydney, when the previous government only had five documented koala sightings in the area over the past 70 years.
Environment Minister Penny Sharpe said gathering accurate data is essential for addressing the decline in numbers.
"I was shocked to know we really hadn't done the baseline work," she said.
"The previous government threw numbers around, but we knew that after the bushfires particularly in 2019 and 2020 that koalas were seriously impacted."
A year ago, the Perrottet government released a renewed NSW Koala Strategy which aimed to double their numbers in the state by 2050.
Within that document it stated that the "strategy assumes a conservative population estimate of 20,000 koalas in New South Wales in 2020", but did not include an updated figure.
The new state-wide survey is using thermal drones and sniffer dogs to try to map numbers, which is how the koalas at Coolah Tops were discovered.
They're now being tested for chlamydia.
"There's going to be work done to see how health they are," the environment minister said.
"It might be a place, if koalas are thriving, that there is an opportunity to do relocations from other areas that are problematic."
The information gathered from the survey will help instruct a "refocus" of the koala strategy that the minister is planning to undertake.
The Minns government will also hold a koala summit at the end of the year.
Koala policy has been problematic in NSW, with tensions within the Coalition spilling over publicly in 2020 — and they also threatened to reappear last year.
In 2020, the then-deputy premier John Barilaro threatened to destroy the Coalition agreement over land clearing restrictions that would have been imposed on private land owners in an attempt to better protect koala habitat.
The former Nationals leader didn't follow through, but the Liberals did make concessions when the policy was eventually finalised.
Last year, the Perrottet government was forced to withdraw contentious legislation, drawn up by current Nationals Leader Dugald Saunders, which would have weakened restrictions for clearing native forest on private land.
Ms Sharpe said she will review the laws that are currently in place.
"We need to actually make sure that all of the settings we've got right, make sure that koalas will survive into the future," she said.
"We need to look at all of the laws whether it's the Biodiversity Conservation Act."
She said all estimates have koalas on track to be extinct in the state by 2050, unless there is serious intervention.
