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Australian bushfires could destroy all koala habitat: Conservationists
At least 350 of the marsupials living on a national reserve in the town of Port Macquarie in New South Wales, 300 kilometres north of Sydney, have died in the bushfires, the group Koala Conservation Australia said last week.
Bushfires raging in Australia’s east coast in the recent weeks have threatened the country’s koala population, with hundreds feared killed as blazes ravage swathes of their natural habitat.
At least 350 of the marsupials living on a national reserve in the town of Port Macquarie in New South Wales, 300 kilometres north of Sydney, have died in the bushfires, the group Koala Conservation Australia said last week.
That compares with a total population of 500 to 600 in the Lake Innes Nature Reserve, the group’s president Sue Ashton had said.
The species has been categorised as “vulnerable” in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List.
Animal carers at the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital nearby have been nursing rescued koalas, bandaging their wounds and feeding them eucalyptus leaves and formula. Videos of people trying to rescue koalas from flames have directed spotlight on the issue, with thousands donating online to institutions such as the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital.
The fire was started by a lightning strike in October in a forest in the New South Wales state, and has at least burnt 2,000 hectares. Two-thirds of that area was koala habitat, Ashton said. The remaining habit was under threat from one of 15 major blazes in the state.
“If we look at a 50% survival rate, that’s around about 350 koalas and that’s absolutely devastating,” Ashton said of the death toll.
The carers at the hospital estimate at least 10 days will be needed to assess the full damage to the koala population.
Experts have previously said that bushfires, along with other factors such as drought and deforestation, have plunged koala populations in Australia, putting the species at risk of ‘functional extinction’, the Australian Koala Foundation said in a May 10 press release.
Functional extinction occurs when the population of a species has declined to a point where it isn’t able to play a vital role in the ecosystem.
Australia’s wildfire season has made a particularly early and devastating start due to above-average temperatures and below-average rainfall that has left much of the country’s east coast in drought and vulnerable to fires.
Warmer weather brought by climate change threatens to worsen conditions for koalas, as deforestation has narrowed habitable areas, said James Tremain of the Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales.
“Devastating bushfires are going to knock out some of these key population centres, but so also will increasing temperatures,” he said, by affecting the nutrition value of eucalyptus leaves that are the animals’ sole food source.
“Koalas are definitely in trouble in New South Wales, but if the declines continue at the same rate as the last 20 to 30 years, koalas could be extinct in the wild by mid-century,” Tremain had said.
Population estimates for koalas, native to Australia, vary widely, from as few as 50,000 to little more than 100,000.
Koalas climb high into trees during wildfires and survive if the fire front passes quickly below them.
