KOALA’S FATE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21280, 25 February 1939, Page 4

KOALA’S FATE

Extinction Threat

Can He Be Preserved?

The koala is threatened with extinction. Scientists and naturalists all over Australia agree on this. But they do not agree on what should be done to save it. There are practical as well as sentimental reasons for preserving the koala.

Here are some of them, outlined by Mr David Stead, honorary secretary of the Wild Life Preservation Society of Australia:

“Like the possum, the koala helps to keep the mistletoe in check," he says. "Also the koala prunes gum trees. This makes the trees sturdier. Forestry officials have told me they consider the koala an important ally.” Australia hasn’t a very good record for the preservation of her wild life, says a special correspondent in the "Daily Telegraph.” At least a dozen species of birds and animals have become extinct since the white invasion. The Tasmanian devil is nearly extinct, and the small emu of Kangaroo and King Islands has vanished. Australia is literally a continent of dying mammals. The koala migrated from West Australia through Northern Australia, to Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. None is now to be found in West Australia. To-day it is fast dying out in the eastern States. Koalas were abundant when the white man settled at Port Jackson in 1788. The secretary of the Koala Club of Australia (Mr Frank L. Edwards) said recently: “From 10 to twelve million, the koalas have been reduced to 10,000.” Victoria has only about 1000, of which 600 are on land where its feed trees are rapidly dying out.

New South Wales has even fewer. Ambrose Pratt, president of the Royal Zoological and Acclimatisation Society, says, “There are, perhaps, 100 bears left in New South Wales—2oo at the most optimistic estimate." The Koala Club of Australia just about knows every wild bear in New South Wales by its Christian name. “There are about six at Wombeyan,” says its secretary, “another six at Quirindi, and between 30 and 40 in the Pittwater—Narrabeen district. Koala Park has about 50, and Taronga Park 16.”

The last stronghold of the koala is Queensland, but a naturalist said recently that “50 per cent of the Queensland bears will die at an early age from malnutrition.” Left to itself the koala will become extinct.

It may not seem likely that the koala’s threatened extinction will matter much. But it is hard to decide these things. Nature's scheme of balance is intricate. Every living species is an Interdependent cog of a giant clock. And man cannot tamper with them with impunity. (Man alone is responsible for the koala's threatened extinction).

Mr A. S. Le Soeuf, naturalist and Curator of the Taronga Park Zoo, has catalogued four chief causer of the destruction of wild life.

They are:—(a) Introduction of the fox, the cat and the rabbit; (b) shooting and trapping for the fur market; (c) opening up of the country by settlement; (d) disease. The European fox is the koala’s greatest natural enemy. On the ground the koala is defenceless, and sometimes he has to travel in this way in his search for food.

In New South Wales, where there are perhaps not more than 100 wild bears, between thirty and forty of these are in th« Pittwater-Narrabeen district. The reason for this is the absence of foxes. And there are no foxes because Ixodes holocyclus. or tick, is present. Foxes cannot live where tick is. Incidentally, they can't live away from permanent water or in the tropics.

Queensland bears should be reasonably safe. But elsewhere in Australia the fox is conquering. They’ve even been seen within three miles of the city of Sydney. The Queensland koala s worst enemy is now the wild dog, dingo-Alsatian cross. Here are the figures of the fur trade’s toll, 1919-1921, quoted by Professor H Osborne and N. E. Anthony in “Natural History,” 1922: Australian possums 4,265,621 Ring-tailed possums 1,321,625 Koala •• 208.677 Wallaby 1.722 But these are probably very conservative. The Wild Life Preservation Society alleged in 1927 that during “1919-1920 it was possible to trace the slaughter of one million koa'as, and even that gigantic total didn’t represent the real figure.” In 1927 the Queensland Government declared an open season in August, and during that month more than 600,000 were killed; during the rest of the year, including a so-called close season, another million were slain for the fur trade. «

Scientists and naturalists all agree the koala has to be saved. But there is not this unity when it comes to the question of how. “The secretary of the Koala Club in Australia (founded in Sydney in July, 1937), said recently: “From 10 to 13 million, the koalas have been reduced to 10,000. Bear farms will have to be established in each Australian State ,’f the koala.” The club’s practical expression of this belief is the support given to Koala Park.

In man.v of the forests the koala’s food trees have been destroyed. Ambrose Pratt says that, left to its own devices, all koalas must eventually perish. “Alike in New South Wales and Victoria, it has become impossible for the koala to inhabit the few surviving tracts of unalienated forest that contain its food trees with any degree ot safety.

. . Every ‘free’ bear in Australia is essentially a captive bear—a captive to the cruel conditions of an unnatural new environment created by man. The problem, therefore, of maitaining the existence of the race is identified with the problem of keeping the koala in captivity. “We cannot afford yet to dogmatise, but it appears certain that our object can be accomplished by the reservation of reasonably large sanctuary areas, well stocked with koala’s adult foodtrees. and effectively protected from the bushfire, the fox, and the wild dog. Provision, of course, should be made to ensure a constant succession of young trees to replace those that die.” Pratt also advocates the establishment of breeding farms.