Wild Koala Day

Over 847,000 koala trees have been planted by community groups across Australia.  And 185,000 koala trees have been distributed free! And the work goes on - many koala conservation charities have regular tree planting sessions. Charities such as the Koala Clancy Foundation and Bangalow Koalas have targets for tree planting that they want to hit. You can support these by volunteering at a tree planting session, or donating for trees to be planted. The Koala Clancy Foundation reports that Koala tree planting leads to increase in koala numbers and duration of stay.

A National Koala Conference was held back in May 2023 in Port Macquarie.  The next National Koala Conference will be in July 2026.

In 2020, surveying for koalas using drones was tested.  It’s now achieving results all over the koala’s range.

Community opposition has had results:  Toondah Harbour was saved form development, and the Shenhua Watermark mine proposal was withdrawn in 2021 (the community opposition there had lasted a decade).  And in March 2023, Australian Ethical divested from Lendlease over koala concerns in New South Wales.

In 2023, the first National Koala Disease Risk Analysis was published. And some incredible research has led to a koala vaccine to prevent chlamydial disease. This has been created by researchers, who are at the University of Sunshine Coast in Queensland. It's important now to make the vaccination more wildly available and trial it is hospitals - it has been under production and used for a number of years already. Friends of the Koala's hospital will be the first in New South Wales to use it, and their vets will be able to vaccinate koalas in their hospital. You can donate to this vaccinate programme here.

The Black Summer 2019-2020 megafires killed thousands of koalas.  And $7.9 million was donated after the fires – and that sum launched the Guulabaa wild koala breeding programme at Port Macquarie.

The fabulous photo pictured left is by Steve Franklin on Unsplash