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Koalas Gone Wild
Mabon writes "CNN reports that 30,000 of the starving animals are destroying the ecosystem by stripping away the greenery. The Austrailian government proposes shooting some 20,000 of them to reduce the amount of gum trees used by the animals."
They sleep 14 hours a day, they are grouchy, irritable and they stink.
They have two defense mechanisms: Peeing on things and exceedingly long, tough claws.
They view many things, including being held as threatening and they are not afraid to use both defense mechanisms on short notice.
Koalas are one of the worst pets you could possibly have.
Here in Canberra, we recently had some fairly significant bushfires (Brushfires to US readers.. though I agree with a slashdot poster of a few months back, who thought that brushfire sounded like a problem caused by overactive grooming...).
As part of the fires, one of our wonderful nature parks ( Tidbinbilla) has lost all but one of their Koalas. Now that leaves are starting to come back onto the trees once more, it might be a good time to try and acquire some more koalas.. This would seem to be an ideal opportunity to bring back a koala population into the area.
I suspect though, that the costs might be somewhat prohibitive, and I'm not really sure about territorial habits of Koalas, so there might be other factors that would make transferrel difficult.
Red.
This is happening on Kangaraoo island, off the coast of south australia.
Koalas were introduced here by humans in the 1920's.
They are not a natural part of the ecosystem.
This story is something I've been keeping track of for the past ten years or so, because I actually used to live on Kangaroo Island (lovely place, don't miss it if you're visiting South Australia).
As mentioned above, the koalas were introduced to KI early last century, and thus have nothing to regulate their population growth as they do on the mainland.
The problem was first brought up about a decade ago, when scientists studying the koalas noticed how large the population was getting, and predicted they'd start stripping their own food sources in a few years. Around that time, the idea of a cull by professional shooters was quietly raised, discussed, and concluded by various intelligent folk to be a good idea.
Then some idiot journalist got hold of it, and beat up a huge story: "They're planning to shoot hundreds of our cute, cuddly national icons!!!"
After the media stink from that, the fucking State Government stated that they would ban the shooting of the koalas. Like it was something to do with them.
Anyway, to show they were doing something about the koala overpopulation problem, they instituted a capture and sterilization program. Yes, they thought they'd stop all those naughty koalas breeding, but leave them in place. Aside from the lifespan of a koala being such that they're still going to destroy their habitat, it's being completely ineffectively implimented.
It takes about two to four man-hours to find and capture one koala. Sterilizing them is another half hour to hour operation, and then they've got to be kept in a cage for a day or so...
I know one of the two (yes, two) vets working on this, and he's got no illusions that it's anything more than a political sop to the idiot majority who can't bear the thought of shooting those cute little animals.
The fact that the notion of culling them has now arisen again shows just how effective this program has been.
And do you know what? The local media are still running with the same fucking slant!!
"They're going to shoot all these cute little koala bears, how awful!"
I think 30,000 koalas starving to death would be a damn sight worse, and far crueler. I'm in favour of the cull.
Oh, and before you ask, we can't really ship them anywhere else. Unless you know somewhere that's able to accomodate 20,000 koalas on short notice, and have a few million dollars to implement the move.
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Here be Dragons
Yes, I can: Right Here.
Money quote:
Not native to Kangaroo Island, Koalas are now devastating, through overeating, these eucalypts.
And I agree that the Reuters article (the actual source, CNN just reprinted it) was basically worthless.
"hauling of 20000 dead koalas"
In Montana when they had to take care of the bodies of hundred of buffalo culled, we used dynamite. Sounds crazy, but it really speeds their decay (and in the buffalo's case they were potentially diseased so that was a prime concern).
Or they could be sold zoo animals.
Every zoo worth its salt already has them, and they are being bred in captivity. Also, the existing zoo stock is more conditioned to humans and less likely to flip out on them (Despite being cute and cuddley, Koalas are fairly well armed for defense, as an above post described).
Furthur, good luck finding a market for tens of thousands of Koalas in zoos. Even if they weren't already in every zoo in the world, you'd be hard pressed to sell that many of them.
Or be relocated to eucalyptus reserves around australia, or in other parts of the world (maybe California).
The problem with Australia is that relocating them will allow them to breed FASTER (same population, more food) and in fifteen years, we'll have 500,000 of them and need to shoot 490,000 before the ecosystem collapses. Relocating does nothing if you don't figure out and fix what's wrong to allow them to overbreed their food supply like this.
A simple look at Australian history will tell you why relocating them to California is a big no-no. Australia is a case-study in how much damage an imported species can do to the existing ecosystem.
On the other hand, maybe Australia should seed Koala populations throughout the world. Sort of their way of saying, "How you like it now, bitch?"