Appin Road's koala underpass has been open for months — and recorded no koalas

Appin Road is not a Menangle Park street, but it is the way through for anyone here driving south to Appin or Wollongong via Bulli Pass — and it runs through one of the state’s last disease-free koala populations.

What the government announced

A joint ministerial release from environment minister Penny Sharpe and roads minister Jenny Aitchison, published 2 September 2026, says a new 52-metre wildlife underpass at Noorumba Reserve “is giving koalas and other native animals a safer way to cross Appin Road”. It is the first of three underpasses planned for the corridor, backed by about three kilometres of koala exclusion fencing on both sides of the road, eight koala grids at driveways, 11 one-way escape hatches, seven escape poles and more than 40,000 native plants. The release credits the exclusion fencing already built “along the fenced section of Appin Road” with an 80 per cent reduction in koala strikes, and says the new underpass “is being monitored” — without stating what the monitoring has found. Transport for NSW estimates about 10,000 vehicles a day use this section of Appin Road, near the Figtree Hill estate.

What the government told the ABC the next day

ABC News reported on 3 September 2026 that the government’s own account is blunter than the release: no koala has been recorded using the $12 million underpass in the five months since it opened. The structure was built by developer Stockland, which is building the neighbouring 1,700-home Figtree Hill estate next to it, and construction ran about a year behind schedule while Stockland sought access to land on the other side of the road owned by Lendlease. The Sydney Basin Koala Network told the ABC that BioNet data recorded six koala strikes and five deaths during that delay, which Stockland called “regrettable”. Asked about the delay, Minister Sharpe told the ABC: “Sometimes delays happen. I still think this is absolutely worth it.”

Environmental researcher and WIRES policy lead Colin Salter told the ABC that koala use of underpasses elsewhere has been rare — “there are not many, and they are infrequent … like one or two detections” — and that “there appears to be a preference for overpasses as they are wildlife crossing structures that replicate habitat”. The ABC separately reported that a 12-month camera-trap study of a Toowoomba bypass found only one koala using its underpasses, while a 2021 Southern Cross University study recorded close to 5,000 medium-to-large mammals and goannas using highway underpasses at Port Macquarie and Grafton — so the record on underpasses generally is mixed, not uniformly discouraging. Salter also said it can take wildlife a “significant period of time” to start using a new crossing. The Sydney Basin Koala Network’s separate count of 66 koala deaths on Appin Road since July 2022 covers the whole road, not just this section.

The project page still says it has not opened

As at 21 September 2026, Transport for NSW’s own Appin Road page still carries this under “Latest news June 2026”: “A koala underpass has been completed near Noorumba Reserve, which will be opened to koalas in the coming months, once the landscaping has established.”

That is the wording an earlier item on this site reported in mid-2026, and it has not changed. It also does not match what the government told the ABC on 3 September, which is that the underpass has been open for five months with no koala recorded using it. Go by the ABC’s account of the government’s position, and treat the project page’s June wording as not yet updated.

What it means for a household here

Nothing changes for a Menangle Park driver day to day. The underpass is in Gilead, about 4 km east of the estate across the Hume Motorway — regional koala infrastructure, not a Menangle Park project. It matters for the same reason the road’s koala fencing generally does: dusk and dawn driving on Appin Road still calls for care.