Officials in the Australian state of Victoria are facing a huge outcry after ordering the culling of hundreds of koalas following the loss of thousands of hectares of habitat in Budj Bim National Park in the south of the region.
A reported 700 koalas have been shot by marksmen in helicopters after an estimated one third of the 5,500-hectare park was burned by a bush fire sparked by a lightning strike.
"The fire broke out in a part of the park where there were an estimated 2,000-3,000 animals,” says Friends of the Earth (FoE) Melbourne. “Some animals have been burnt and injured and do not have access to enough food.”
FoE adds that “aerial culling of koalas is an Australian first and sets a nasty ethical precedent” and argues that it does not allow for proper health assessments of the adults or to consider the fate of dependent joeys.
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The management of koalas in Victoria has long been a difficult issue. As the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) points out in its 2023 strategy document, numbers of this iconic marsupial have expanded greatly since the 1920s following sharp declines in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a result of habitat loss, disease and hunting for their fur.
Breeding programmes on offshore islands led to koalas being translocated back to the mainland, but this in turn led to “contemporary management issues, including over-browsing and low genetic diversity,” DEECA says.
In fact, koalas are now thriving in Victoria, with more than 450,000 across the state, and in some areas the department argues, they occur at “unsustainable densities” leading to poor welfare from starvation and increased disease susceptibility.
But FoE Melbourne says much of this is a result of poor management. Between 1995 and 2010, 170,000 hectares of a favoured koala food tree, the blue gum, were established in the south-west of the state, and these attract thousands of animals. When these plantations are clear-felled every 14 years, it leads to starvation and deaths.
That these animals are the descendants of the translocated animals, not ones that have been living continuously in the state, is an added problem. “The translocated animals tend to go through unnatural boom and bust cycles,” says FoE. “This has been accentuated through the planting of hundreds of thousands of hectares of new habitat.”
As well as Victoria, koalas are also found in South Australia, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory and Queensland, but they are less common in the more northerly states.
Main image: Koala and joey. Credit: Getty
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