Animal Diaries Archive

The Future Of Koalas

1 April 2005

Koalas are amazing creatures that have been roaming Australia for approximately 14 million years, however it is a little known (yet quite disturbing) fact that koalas face extinction within the next 20 years. From the early 1900's the koala population has plummeted from 10 million to an estimated 50-100,000 koalas. Therefore, it is critical that we do what we can now to help protect the koala. Things that can be done include planting koala food trees, stopping de-forestation and avoiding highways through koala habitats. Keeping your dog inside your yard is a huge help, as unfortunately domestic dogs are one of the leading causes of koala death to date. Organisations with captive koalas need to maintain healthy breeding programs and keep up to date breeding records. As koalas could be facing possible extinction it is essential that we have as many genetically different (or un-related) koalas as possible. This prevents in-breeding in the, and helps to ensure a more robust and sustainable koala population.

Here at Australia Zoo we can trace most of our koalas back to their parents and sometimes even beyond! One of our oldest koalas, Girra, was born in January 1988. In March 1999 she gave birth to Raindrop, a beautiful girl with pink love heart nostrils! In November 2002, Raindrop had her first joey, Dewdrop. She has her mothers light coloured fur and is very cute. Nowadays you can find Grandma, Mum and baby all living in our Walk Through enclosure where on any day you may be lucky enough to pat one.

Hopefully we can continue breeding more and more generations of koalas as it will be a sad future if we no longer have any Girra's, Raindrop's or Dewdrops.