Rescued koala in care, Wauchope, NSW 2021 (Picture Gregg Borschmann)
Koala:
More so than ever, the koala has become a looking glass to the future.
With nowhere to hide, the koala unwittingly framed the rolling nightmare of the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires. Australia – and climate change – were firmly in the international spotlight.
In a reprise of the conservation crisis in Australia of the early 1900s when koalas were thought to be extinct in Victoria and South Australia, the koala is once again in serious decline across many regions.
Rising average temperatures and declining rainfall over recent decades have contributed to the koala disappearing across much of its historic range in northern Queensland and western NSW.
There’s always been argument and confusion about how many koalas live in Australia. One recent Senate inquiry accepted that there were 10 million koalas in Australia at the time of European colonisation. That figure is disputed. Current population estimates are also disputed ranging from as high as 300,000 to as low as 50,000 - and that was before the fires. The numbers are complicated by the southern koala which is over-populated in many areas and has degraded regional ecosystems.
Gregg Borschmann is currently recording a koala oral history collection for the National Library of Australia and writing a book for Simon & Schuster Australia to be published in 2022.
Koala – Saving an Australian Icon NLA Oral History Collection: