Koala’s nightly binges costs northern rivers nursery $6000

A mysterious “leaf thief” that scoffed $6000 worth of tree seedlings at a NSW northern rivers nursery has been identified. And he’s so cute, he’s almost forgiven.

For two months a mysterious “leaf thief” had munched through $6000 worth of tree seedlings at a NSW northern rivers nursery.

Eastern Forest Nursery owner Humphrey Herington would find the young trees — being grown for koala habitat restoration projects — stripped of their new leaves in overnight raids.

He thought a possum was behind the thefts, however one morning three weeks ago, after a particularly big binge session, the offender was unable to make a quick getaway.

In the midst of a food coma sat a large, well-padded male koala, who Mr ­Herington has since named Claude due to his big claws.

“One morning we arrived and he must’ve had a big feed that night because he was too full to climb back up his tree,” Mr Herington said. “That’s when we realised it was a koala not a possum.”

Claude the koala unsuccessfully tries to use a power pole as camouflage. Picture: Eastern Forest Nursery.

But being caught green-handed didn’t put an end to Claude’s nocturnal feasts.

“I put a towel around him and moved him a few hundred metres down the road to a big tree at my neighbour’s place,” Mr Herington said.

“He was pretty stroppy when I picked him up.

“Two days later, Claude was back and he’s been hanging around getting into the seedlings every night. “

Mr Herington is now taking more drastic measures to protect the trees until they are mature enough to be planted elsewhere. 

“I’m in the process now of building a fence around the nursery to keep him out,” he said.

An entirely unrepentant Claude with his all-you-can-eat buffet in the background. Picture: Eastern Forest Nursery

For more than 20 years the nursery has been growing koala food trees, and now supplies seedlings for koala habitat restoration projects by Bangalow Koalas and the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature, Australia.

Primary food trees including tallowwood, forest red gum and swamp mahogany, and secondary food trees including grey gum, red mahogany and grey box, are all grown on site. 

Claude has eaten his way through “thousands” of these seedlings. 

Despite growing food for koalas for the past few decades, Mr Herington had not had a koala move into the property before. 

“To me this is not normal koala activity,” he said. 

“However they don’t have too many choices of where they can go to get new food.

“There must be a shortage of food around here.

“There are quite a lot of trees only 2m tall with koalas in them and feeding on them.” 

Head of koala recovery at WWF Australia Tanya Pritchard said South Gundurimba and the surrounding area was notoriously bad for habitat loss.

“There is definitely an urgent need for more trees so koalas don’t have to go looking for suitable habitat,” she said.

“This behaviour shows that we need to scale up our work, which we are doing through koala-friendly carbon. 

“We are planting thousands of trees and hopefully the koalas can wait for them to grow a bit before consuming them.” 

In 2022, WWF funded the local community group Bangalow Koalas to plant more than 10,000 trees at a farm down the road from Eastern Forest Nursery to help combat the impacts of habitat loss on the local koala population.

The nearby Bruxner Highway is also a “koala kill hotspot”, according to Bangalow Koalas president Linda ­Sparrow.

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