Court OKs the Destruction of Koala Habitat for a Giant Coal Mine: The Chinese-owned project could kill hundreds of the marsupials in one of Australia's most fertile agricultural regions

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An Australian court on Friday ruled that a huge coal mine would be permitted to destroy habitat that's home to hundreds of the country's increasingly imperiled koalas.

"The hill where the mine is going to be is a source of water for the aquifer, as is all the hills in the district," farmer Andrew Pursehouse told me last September as we stood on his 11,000-acre farm, which borders the mine site.

Biologists said the mine would cut off a migration corridor for koalas, which have been observed moving south and east as temperatures rise.

"I'm very concerned about what is going to happen to that population of koalas," David Paull, a wildlife ecologist opposed to the mine, said in September as a large koala dozed in an eucalyptus tree on the Pursehouse farm.

"If we lose that population, that will weaken the whole meta-population, and the location of the mine will inhibit the ability of koalas to move in and out of the area. It could be a disaster."

On Friday, the land and environment court for the state of New South Wales rejected the farmers' appeal, finding that because the government had designated the mine a "State significant development," endangered species protections for the koala did not have to be considered.

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