Revealed: French Island's koala numbers spark ecological disaster
French Island was supposed to be Australia’s perfect koala refuge. Now it’s littered with carcasses and bare trees, as locals beg for action.
Spotting a koala on French Island is as easy as closing your eyes and pointing. That might sound like a tourist’s dream, but it’s actually an ecological nightmare.
The island between the Mornington Peninsula and Phillip Island was supposed to be Australia’s perfect koala refuge. Now it’s littered with carcasses and bare trees, home to 12,000 koalas when it can only support 5,000.
Scott Coutts spent nearly 30 years as a park ranger here. Now he runs tours and watches the disaster unfold daily.
“It’s horrible. Soon we won’t have any koalas to show the tourists,” he says. “One of the main reasons people come here is to see koalas. It’s quite a sad situation.
“We need to see some intervention immediately. With vets and trained koala catchers to do health checks and unfortunately euthanise the ones that are too sick to recover.
“There are a lot of wildlife carers around the peninsula that joeys or sick koalas can be taken to, but it needs some intervention immediately to help stop the koala deaths and starvation across the island.”
French Island should have been the perfect home. Two-thirds national park, it’s Australia’s only disease-free koala population. No foxes, barely any feral cats, no competing wildlife. The koalas had it all to themselves — and that’s exactly the problem.
Michael Garwood moved to the island eight years ago, drawn by its pristine environment. He’s watched it transform.
“When we bought the place, these trees had a heavy canopy,” he says, looking at now-skeletal eucalypts. “Over the last two years, the canopies have dropped off.”
It’s happened before. Garwood’s research shows a similar population crash in the early 1920s. Too many koalas, not enough food, dead trees.
The island’s 110 human residents are watching it happen again. Sue Jenkins planted mature trees on her property — they’re all dead now.
“A lot of the old trees that have been here for ages are dead. Plus the trees people plant. You sort of think, why are we doing this?”
Desperation is everywhere. Michael Gearon had 50 saplings growing along his driveway until the koalas stripped them bare. His only option now? An electric fence.
For Coutts, the worst discoveries are the dead females with joeys still in their pouches. Two lives lost to a preventable crisis.
Solutions exist but need action. The government used to relocate koalas and sterilise females with hormone implants.
But they last relocated nearly a decade ago, and when they last sterilised, they only treated 250 females — nowhere near enough.
“A female koala will have one baby every year for the whole of her life,” he said. “So that’s a lot of koalas.
“The hormone implants will work in the field for that long, so they’re very effective.
“But the program has to be sustainable and has to continue. At least 80 per cent of the female population needs to be done.”
“We need intervention immediately. Parks Victoria manages the national park, and DEECA handles wildlife statewide. Issue permits and get action happening.”
Jenkins agrees removal is urgent: “It can’t be just a five-year program because we won’t have any swamp gums left.”
As the sun sets through bare branches that once formed a green canopy, you can spot the koalas that cling to dead leafless trees.
French Island’s question isn’t whether it can return to its former glory — it’s whether anyone will act before this disaster becomes a complete collapse.
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