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| An injured koala recuperates in hospital. |
Would you ever want to be a
koala? Over the past few years I’ve unwittingly become closer and closer
acquainted with koalas. It started with a simple assent to a colleague’s
request to swab some koalas when I was visiting Western Australia. That was for
the purpose of detecting and identifying a pathogenic fungus, cryptococcus,
which may cause mild to severe and even fatal disease in koalas.
The swabbage snowballed into
hosting an Italian mycologist at my house, which turned out to be wonderful as
she is one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met. That snowballed into being a
bridesmaid for said mycologist in Italy, which turned into hosting a honeymoon
visit in Australia, which yesterday transformed into accompanying one but four mycologists on a field trip to look
for the environmental niche of pathogenic cryptococcal species (in plain
English: swabbing trees that koalas are found in). I even understood what they
were talking about. One moral of this story is that saying yes can change your
life in unexpected ways.
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| There is a koala in this tree. It was much, much higher than I expected (look carefully, near the centre of the image). This was a windy day and the branch was swaying nauseatingly. |
Another is this: koalas have
it pretty rough. People think they sit around chewing gum leaves and chilling out but they're never far from danger - much of it imposed by us. They have to contend with dog attacks, bushfires, trauma
(mostly caused by motor vehicles but this can be caused by falling out of trees
– and when the wind picked up yesterday I realised why) and relentless habitat
destruction. On the Tomaree Peninsula, for example, where a major road cuts
right through a koala corridor (resulting in many fatalities), proposed
developments threaten to fragment this habitat further. No wonder koalas are
stressed and vulnerable to a range of diseases like cryptococcosis, chlamydia, lymphoma, and koala retroviruses.
We met some
injured koalas and heard from the dedicated carers who treat, rehabilitate and
release these animals. Even sourcing food for these guys in care is a massive undertaking. They will only eat certain species of eucalypts and the volume they can chew through is incredible. Its all about keeping the gut moving - when they stop eating for 48 hours they can be challenging to save. While learning about diseases like cryptococcus is
important, acting to prevent habitat destruction and fragmentation is the most important
thing we can do.
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| These tawny frogmouths were well disguised in a tree also inhabited by koalas. |
If you want to find out more
about protecting koala habitat, and what one local group is doing to help, visit the Hunter Koala Preservation Society
here.
If you want to learn more
about pathogenic fungi that affect koalas, consider attending the International
Society for Human and Animal Mycology (ISHAM) conference in May. More info
here.
