What is the status of Australia’s koalas?

What is the status of Australia’s koalas? What organizations are working to help them and what can people like me do to make a difference?

—Amy Marcus, via e-mail

Seven to 10 million koalas inhabited Australia at the time of white settlement two centuries ago. Today only about 100,000 remain. Native to the eucalyptus forests of Australia’s eastern seaboard, koalas were hunted extensively by the continent’s first European settlers, who shipped as many as two million of the highly prized pelts abroad each year.

While protection efforts by the Australian government have since eliminated most koala hunting, today these climbing marsupials face an even more imposing threat in the form of over-development and sprawl. Koalas are becoming scarce even in their primary habitats, and are considered “vulnerable” by the Australian government and “at risk” by the World Conservation Union, a global consortium of scientists and experts.

According to a recent survey by the Australian Koala Foundation (AKF), the primary non-government agency working to protect koalas, a third of the country’s viable habitat no longer supports any of the animals, while the remaining two-thirds is becoming increasingly fragmented or degraded by human activity. “I truly believe that in my lifetime the koala will become extinct unless we do something,” says AKF’s executive director Deborah Tabarat.

Tabarat and other environmentalists are urging the Australian government to protect the eucalyptus groves upon which koalas depend for food and shelter. Increasing urbanization has led to the removal of millions of acres of eucalyptus forest, especially on Australia’s east coast where most of the continent’s people, as well as koalas, live.

Australian authorities have relocated koalas from islands to repopulate some parts of the continent, including South Australia, where koalas were hunted to extinction, and Victoria, where numbers had been reduced to almost nothing. As a result, populations have bounced back somewhat, but new problems, such as inbreeding and overcrowding, which leave them more susceptible to disease, have resulted.

Additionally, more than 4,000 koalas die every year from dog attacks and car collisions. This “one-two punch,” says Tabarat, could lead to Australia’s koalas going extinct in the wild within 15 years.

Those interested in the fate of the koala can support AKF’s efforts. The organization has created a Koala Habitat Atlas to identify and record koala habitat throughout Australia, and is lobbying the country’s legislature to pass a National Koala Act which would provide government funding to protect these lands key to the animal’s survival.

CONTACTS: World Conservation Union, www.iucn.org; Australian Koala Foundation, G.P.O. Box 2659, Brisbane QLD 4001 Australia, www.savethekoala.com.