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."

Comments

Re:Capture and Sell them!

[jfdawes]

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.

Not native

[moxruby]

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.

I used to live there.

[Thornae]

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.

Re:I used to live there.

[Thornae]

Nothing actually eats koalas. Since their diet consists entirely of eucalyptus leaves, the meat would be almost inedible.
Australia doesn't actually have any large land predators except humans. Generally, the environment is harsh enough to act as population control. In this case, the Island (as it's known to locals) lacks sufficient nastiness of climate and such to reduce the population through attrition.

Re:Worthless article

[SEE]

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.