Nearly a third of the koalas in their main habitat of New South Wales may be among the 480 million animals to have died in the Australian bushfires.
Ecologists believe that 8,000 koalas have burnt to death on the state’s mid-north coast, about 240 miles north of Sydney. The site, one of the most populous koala habitats, was ravaged along with a leading hospital for the marsupials at Port Macquarie.
“It may well be up to 30 per cent of the population in that region [was killed], because up to 30 per cent of their habitat has been destroyed,” Sussan Ley, the federal environment minister, said. More than five million hectares have been burnt across Australia in an unprecedented bushfire season that has killed nine people.
Ecologists estimate that about 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles have died in the fires that began in September.
The New South Wales mid-north coast is home to the largest number of Australia’s koalas, with an estimated population of up to 28,000. “We’ll know more when a proper assessment can be made,” Ms Ley told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
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At Port Macquarie’s Koala Hospital carers looked after 72 animals on Christmas Day. Cheyne Flanagan, the clinical director, said that they were brought in after fires tore through their habitat. Mark Graham, an ecologist with the Nature Conservation Council, told a state parliamentary inquiry this month that koalas had “no capacity” to escape from the fires.
“We’ve lost such a massive swathe of known koala habitat that we can say without any doubt there will be ongoing declines in koala populations from this point forward,” he said.
The fires have also ravaged parts of the Gondwana rainforests on the Queensland border, which have existed since the time of the dinosaurs.
Valuable vineyards owned by Henschke, the South Australian winery, and some of the oldest pinot noir vines in the Adelaide hills have also been destroyed.
