March. April 57While the koala was not on any of these lists, the species
quickly became the symbol of all that precious and largely unique
Australian biodiversity being pushed very close to the edge by
the fires. Heart-wrenching social media footage went viral of a
quintessential teddy bear-like koala crying in pain as a woman
rescued it from a charred and smouldering forest on the NSW
north coast, literally giving up her shirt to wrap around its badly
burnt body. Later, from the Cooma area, south of Canberra, came
reports of screaming koalas falling like fireballs from burning trees.
The focus of attention for a massive outpouring of grief, both
nationally and internationally, for Australia’s native animals
quickly became the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital, a facility set
up in 1973 as Australia’s first wildlife hospital and now staffed by
more than 150 volunteers. The first koala burns victim from the
recent tragedy was Paul, who was brought in on 2 November,
after which the hospital became a frenetic hub of activity for at
least the next 12 weeks.
November is normally quiet for the hospital, but 50,000
people filed though its gates that month after the first images
of Paul went around the world. And what they witnessedScientific
name:
Phascolarctos
cinereusCommon name: koala is an
Indigenous word meaning “no water”
Drinking: it used to be thought koalas
don’t actively drink, getting enough
moisture from the leaves they eat.
It’s now known they do drink and can
suffer severely from dehydration
during drought and heatwaves if they
don’t get enough water.
Main threats: habitat destruction and
fragmentation (an estimated 80 per
cent of the species’ habitat has been
lost since European colonisation);
the sexually transmitted bacterial
disease chlamydia; dog attacks;
collisions with cars; climate change.Conservation status: listed since
2012 as vulnerable to extinction in
Queensland, NSW and the ACT;
NSW was thought, before the bush-
fires, to have lost 25 per cent of its
koalas during the past two decades.
Distribution: eucalypt forests
and woodlands of mainland
south and eastern Australia.
Diet: the leaves of eucalypts and a
few other related species such as
melaleuca; an adult can eat more
than 500g of leaves a day; they are
thought to eat only about 20 of
the roughly 700 eucalypt species
in Australia.
Size and appearance: Queensland
koalas are smaller, have lighter-
coloured and less fur than koalas in
the other states; Queensland adult
females weigh 5–6kg, males 6–8kg;
Victoria’s adult females average
8.5kg, males 12kg.Koala
facts
Visitors to the
koala hospital are
able to watch the
care and attention
given to koalas.
Here, an admission
is checked by
clinical director
Cheyne Flanagan
(at right) and
Scott Castle,
assistant clinical
director, and
volunteer
Susanne Schueter.