Koalas Considered For Endangered Status; Up To 1/3 May Have Been Killed Since 2018 By Fires, Disease
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Two years ago, when bush fires supercharged by climate change killed or displaced an estimated 3 billion animals, thousands of koalas were among the dead. Between the blazes, drought, disease and deforestation, almost a third of the country’s koalas have disappeared since 2018, according to one conservation group. The federal government is weighing whether to label half the country’s koalas as endangered.
The collapse is especially severe in New South Wales, where the bush fires destroyed 70 percent of some koala populations and a state inquiry warned that the species will probably go extinct before 2050 without urgent government intervention.
Marsh and her colleagues had come to Kosciuszko National Park on a mission. For decades there had been speculation that koalas roamed its 1.7 million mountainous acres. Now, with the 2019-2020 bush fires boosting funding and urgency, the scientists aimed to determine whether koalas were hiding in one of the country’s best-known wilderness areas.
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Australia’s koala population plummeted over the next century as the animals were hunted for their fur, a practice that culminated in a 1927 Queensland cull that killed at least 600,000 in a month. Koala killing was outlawed, but the animals continued to suffer from a chlamydia epidemic and a habitat shortage as eucalyptus forests were paved for subdivisions. Although adapted to Australia’s frequent dry spells, the animals couldn’t cope with a climate-change-fueled drought in 2018 and 2019 that saw dehydrated koalas literally dropping from trees. Then came the Black Summer bush fires, which burned more than 20 percent of Australia’s forests.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/13/australia-koalas-fires-climate-change/
