Koalas have been classified as endangered for the first time in Australia after thousands of the creatures were killed in wildfires two years ago.
Australia’s environment minister has moved the much-loved animal from the vulnerable category to endangered in the states of Queensland, New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory, meaning they are one step closer to extinction and will be given greater protection.
Conservationists say almost a third of the country’s koalas have disappeared since 2018, because of the deadly fires, as well as land-clearing, drought and dog attacks.
The Australian Koala Foundation estimated koala populations have dropped to less than 58,000 from more than 80,000. It’s thought at least 6,400 were killed in the “black summer” bushfires in late 2019 and early 2020, which killed or displaced an estimated 3 billion animals.
The loss was felt most in New South Wales, where the fires killed around 70 per cent of koala populations. A state inquiry warned that the species could become extinct by 2050 without urgent intervention.
“Koalas are an international and national icon, but they were living on a knife-edge even before the black summer bushfires, with numbers in severe decline due to land-clearing, drought, disease, car strikes and dog attacks,” said the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s (Ifaw) Oceania regional director Rebecca Keeble.
She said the bushfires were the “final straw” and that the country should never have allowed things to get to the point where it was at risk of losing a national icon.
“It is a dark day for our nation,” Ms Keeble added. “If we can’t protect an iconic species endemic to Australia, what chance do lesser-known but no less important species have? This must be a wake-up call to Australia and the government to move much faster to protect critical habitat from development and land-clearing and seriously address the impacts of climate change.”
Experts say koalas are one of the animals most vulnerable to the climate crisis and they argue that with fire intensity and frequency only likely to increase, further action is needed to ensure these koala populations survive. The federal government has pledged Aus$50m (£26m) for koala recovery and habitat restoration.
“These actions are vital to ensure the survival of the species into the future, but without addressing the root cause of their decline, which is habitat loss and climate change, we are just plugging holes in a sinking ship,” Ms Keeble said.
