Be a hero and protect koalas, our native friends!

Koalas are native to Australia and are a well-known Australian icon; unfortunately, however, the number of them left out in the wild is dropping raidly, in the last decade especially. There are many reasons for this, all of which tend to link and come from one issue, humans. To survive, koalas need eucalyptus leaves. If they don’t find them, they will starve, and also die of thirst as their hydration comes from the leaves also. There are over 600 types of eucalyptus trees that are in Australia, but it is only the leaves off 20 or 30 that the koala will eat, they smell the leaves to check the toxicity levels within them as all eucalyptus leaves are toxic at different levels. The leaf is also where they get most of their hydration from; they hardly ever drink water or any type of liquid. It occasionally eats leaves from other trees as well, such as tea and cherry trees, but like humans, they all like different things, not all koalas like the same kinds of leaves. Many of their preferred trees have been wiped out and there is not much natural habitat left, thus why it is such an issue to increase their habitat by simply planting trees, also time is an issue, the trees needed do not simply grow over night, Koalas also sleep between 18 – 20 hours a day and do not like change either, so moving them to a new location is difficult.

Naomi Hogan from the Wilderness Society, mainly works with the koala population in the Pilliga Forest, the largest remaining temperate woodland in Eastern Australia. She says that the area has suffered a 75% drop in it’s koala population over the last 10 years, mainly due to heat stress. This was paricually beacuse of huge droughts which swept across the forest mainly in 2007 and 2009, causing many koalas to die from dehydration.

Factors such as mining, housing development and industrial development are also wiping out many bush land habitat places that koalas call home. All of these developments are also limiting koalas ability to finding another mate. They can’t travel and find a mate from a different family, which causes them to inbreed. As in humans, this causes genetic defects, including a low immune system. This leaves them more at risk to disease and also allows disease to spread much easier, one reason why Chlamydia is spreading at a rapid rate and wiping out much of the koala population. Scientists are still at a loss on how to contain and help delay the spread of the disease. Like humans Chlamydia is spread mainly breeding sex, but also when the joeys (baby koalas) eat the mothers pap, (sort of like breast milk for humans, pap is a soft, runny form of koala dropping, in the pap the mother passes bacteria that the joey will need to be able to digest eucalyptus leaves in the future.) Koalas are also commonly at risk of dog attacks.

It is hard to find an accurate statistic on how many koalas are infected with Chlamydia, approximately around 70%. Wildlife worker Crystal Cardwell (pictured) says it would be pointless in bringing in wild koalas to vets to give them a urine test to see if they do carry the disease, because they may infect others, however it is usually obvious. Their eyes are red and crusty and their bottoms are red and dirty looking. All koalas at Feather Dale Wildlife Park are clean, and if one were to contract the disease massive quarantine measures would be put into place. Koalas live up to 20 years in captivity, on average between 12-15 years and in the wild on average only about 8-10 years.

Koalas can have either two types of Chlamydia; Chlamydia pecorum and Chlamydia pneumonia, neither of these are the same as the sexually transmitted disease that humans get, humans can however, catch Chlamydia from koalas (rumour speculated that some members of popular boy band one direction did.) For this to happen the human would have to touch the koalas eyes and then put that bacteria covered hand in their eye or in their mouth, or get pee’d on by an infected koala. Chlamydia in koalas may result in, infertility, blindness and death.

Earlier this year, environment Minister, Tony Burke, announced Australia’s most at-risk koala populations need to be included on the national list of threatened species. Naomi Hogan says that areas that are key for koala habitats need to be protected from logging, mining and other destructive threats. She says that there is a lot of pressure on the government by mining companies to maintain profits by allowing exploitation of natural resources, including the removal of natural koala habitat. The government is still refusing to put up a red flag and stop the destruction of these habitats.

The town of Gunnedah is known as the koala capital of the world and it is a huge part of their local tourism, the loss of koalas in the wild would have massive effects on tourism. A few years ago it was possible to see them everywhere, and even now they are slightly harder to find, and if people are restricted to seeing koalas in zoos, the town will suffer to a massive extent.

It seems apparent that the government’s actions are not entirely working out too well. There are many groups currently trying to help out, but what can individuals do to help? The Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) is the principal non-profit, non-government organisation dedicated to the conservation and effective management of the wild koala and its habitat, you could donate money to them, plant a eucalyptus tree, or by adopting a koala or joey.

The name Koala comes from an Australian Aboriginal dialect; it means “animal that does not drink.”

---