Australians Weigh Shooting 20,000 Koalas

Reuters


Officials say 30,000 koalas on Kangaroo Island are stripping the island of its native gum trees.




SYDNEY (April 30) - A koala
population explosion on an Australian island has prompted calls for 20,000 of the furry, native marsupials to be shot to stop them destroying their island habitat and end a koala famine.
Some 30,000 koalas on Kangaroo Island, off the coast of the state of South Australia, are stripping the island of its native gum trees, destroying the ecosystem and causing a koala famine, say environmentalists and national parks officials.
''We are talking thousands of starving koalas,'' said Sandra Kanck from the Australian Democrats, Australia's third major political party.
''While they may be cute and cuddly we need to get beyond emotion to reality...my suggestion is professional shooters do it quickly and cleanly,'' Kanck told Reuters on Friday of the proposed cull.
The South Australian state government has rejected calls for a cull, preferring sterilization and relocation.

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:-(

capturing them and giving them to zoos? -shrug-

about 15 years ago a friend of mine worked at Regents Park Zoo in London. Part of his daily routine was to go to the airport and pick up the supply of leaves for the koalas.

So just moving them elsewhere isn't really an easy option...

This is like hunting the Easter Bunny (instead of the eggs). You can't make a creature known to the entire world as the adorable mascot of a continent and then GO SHOOT HIM!

Although I'm sure Cheney and Scalia would appreciate an invitation.

I'd be happy to have one come live with me :) :) :)

the government said they don't want to. i think they'll find another way to handle the situation.

ps. your link requires us to sign into your account.

If they're anything like the US government, they'll simply study the problem for about 10 years, until the population crashes and tens of thousands of them starve, along with the forest inhabitants they killed through deforestation.

But every year approximately 300 people vanish while hiking in Australian forests. Scientists believe koalas kill humans and use the corpses as hosts for their larval young.

doesn't all the animal wildlife in Australian kill man? Koalas must have evolved to look sooooo cute to pull us closer. We forget they are from Australia and this is our peril.

Something must eat them, perhaps pythons or raptors. Where are they? Or is a boom-bust cycle natural to koalas? Inquirng minds..........

Either meaning of the word gives me a funny mental image.

They are native to the mainland of Australia, but were never able to cross the strait and migrate to this island. Therefore, they have no natural predators to control their populations there.

Relocation doesn't seem like much of an option, because where would you relocate them too? Most forests in Australia within the native range of koalas are already populated by them, as hunting koala has been illegal for decades. Their main danger right now is habitat loss, where more and more koalas are already being pushed into less and less land. To then transplant 20,000 more of these animals into an already often overpopulated ecosystem would be a recipe for disaster. Sterilization is also out of the question for the simple fact that it would be enormously expensive. Here in the US, tests involving sterilizing whitetail deer found that, to simply dart and chemically sterilize a doe cost a minimum of $300 per animal. These drugs wore off within 1-2 yrs of injection, requiring yearly outings by darters. That cost rose to over $1000 when surgical sterilization was used. While more permanent, that translates into $20 MILLION dollars if the US example holds. Even if they can do it for 1/2 that amount, thats $10 million! And if the koalas are already to the point where they are deforesting the island, sterilization is too late to help. Koalas live for decades; it would take a long time before their numbers declined from old age and disease. Before then, though, they and many other species of plants and animals would be long dead from starvation and habitat loss from stripped gum trees.

Yes, they are cute. But then so are the rabbits that devour every blade of grass across the Australian mainland, or the fox that eats small marsupials to the point of their extinction. These are introduced animals just as much as the koalas are on Kangaroo Island, and all should be treated the same: culling. To do otherwise would allow dozens of rare species native to the island to be wiped out.

You're quite correct, it's a pity, but there's nothing else for it. Another chapter from the book of unintended consequences. Small islands ecosystems are especially vulnerable to the introduction of alien species.
Are there any endemics on this island or are the threatened species of larger distribution?