Bushfires: call to arms on koala catastrophe

Conservationists are calling on the government to take drastic action to save the nation’s native koala population.

A wildlife rescuer handles a sedated koala in Quenbeyan. Picture: Getty Images

Conservationists are calling on the government to take drastic action­ to save the nation’s native koala population after thousands were killed in the summer of bushfires and say “big gaps” in our knowledge of the marsupials mean we may never know the full extent of the disaster.

World Wildlife Fund policy manager Stuart Blanch told a NSW parliamentary inquiry into koala population and habitats on Tuesday that koalas were “heading towards extinction” and should be added to the national endangered species list.

While he said it was impossible to know how many koalas had died in the bushfires, he warned preliminary surveys in the state’s north suggested some koala communities had shrunk by 80-85 per cent following the fires.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have estimated about 8000 koalas were killed across NSW during the summer of bushfires but Dr Blanch told the hearing he feared that number would wind up being far worse.

“They are heading towards extinction increasingly. I wouldn’t be surprised, based on what we’re hearing, if we lost 10,000 koalas from the fires and the drought,” he told the inquiry.

Dr Blanch told The Australian it was difficult to assess the full ­extent of the destruction because most of the data on koala populations was dated. Adding further difficulty, he said it was unclear how many koalas existed before the fires, saying he could only “very cautiously estimate the nation­al koala population was betwee­n 100,000 and 200,000”.

Australian National Univer­sity biologist Kara Youngentob told the parliamentary inquiry the ability for conservationists to respond to the crisis had been constrained by a lack of knowledge.

“There are gaps in our understanding of how koala popul­ations respond to fire but we know extreme heat affects how much a koala can eat, leaving them malnourished,” she said.

Science for Wildlife executive director Kellie Leigh told the inquiry­ at least 1000 koalas in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, had been impacted by the fires in some way, with a number of habit­ats burnt to the ground: “We don’t know how many survivors are out there. We have to wait until it’s safe to go in and see.”

NSW Rural Fire Service volunteer and conservationist James Fitzgerald, who owns three wildlife sanctuaries in the state’s southeast, told the inquiry more could be done to end conflict between conservationists and farmers, including subdivision laws.

“Farmers have habitat on their land and they want to sell some of that for their retirement but they’re not allowed to subdivide it,” Mr Fitzgerald said.

“Can we have environmental subdivision so farmers can slice off environmental habitat and sell it for conservation?”