The Australian “teddy bear” is miserable. The koala, which is not a bear but a marsupial like the kangaroo, is not only suffering from displacement from its traditional habitats in the East Coast forests. The consequences of global warming, the increasing risk of catastrophic bush fires and the sexually transmitted disease Clamydia have drastically reduced the koala population in recent years.
Now the national government wants to ensure the survival of this well-known species by classifying the koala as “Vulnerable” in the states of Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory around Canberra. According to Environment Minister Sussan Ley, the increase in risk should give animals a higher priority in protection.
According to estimates by the state research institute CSIRO, around 180,000 koalas still live along Australia’s east coast, according to the politician. Ley told Australian radio on Friday that the government has not set any goals for increasing the koala population. On the other hand, she wants to build up “resilient” populations in the run-up to future natural disasters.
180,000 koalas are “nonsense”
Environmental organizations, which have been warning of the extinction of koalas for years, welcomed the step on Friday as “necessary”, but also expressed criticism. A spokeswoman for the Koala Foundation described Ley’s number of 180,000 as “nonsense”. Nationwide, the population of wild koalas is still estimated at 50,000 to 80,000.
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Increasingly rare to find: a koala in the wild.
SRF/Urs Walterlin
The discrepancy between the figures illustrates the different views between Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Conservative government and environmental groups on the extent and need for protective measures. Last year, a study by the state of New South Wales came to the conclusion that koalas could be extinct by 2050 if the destruction of their habitat continues at the current rate.
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The bush fires around the turn of the year 2019/2020 also hit the koalas hard.
key stone
Climate change and its consequences are among the main reasons for the reduction in koala populations. At least 5,000 koalas died in the blaze during the catastrophic fires at the turn of the year 2019/2020. Hundreds more later starved to death because they could not find food in the burned-out landscape. At least as great a threat is displacement by humans: deforestation contributes significantly to the destruction of koala habitat when forests have to give way to new housing developments, roads and mines.
More deforestation in the koala habitats
The spokesman for the WWF in Australia, Stuart Blanch, therefore warned on Friday that the upgrading of the endangered status will not stop the threatened extinction of these animals, “unless there are additional stricter laws for landowners to protect forest areas”.
The Department of Environment, currently led by Sussan Ley, has authorized the logging of over 25,000 hectares of koala habitat over the past decade, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation.