About 60,000 koalas died, wounded, or were displaced in Australia's bush fires.
Two years later, how are the koalas doing?
Two years later, how are the koalas doing?
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AnimalsTranscript
00:00Here he's looking at it, if he could work it out.
00:10Two years after the bushfires, the situation for koalas is not the same, it's actually worse.
00:15So before the bushfires, koalas were already heavily threatened
00:19and during the catastrophic bushfires, thousands perished and were displaced.
00:30The most memorable was Ember, she was hunkered down trying to defend herself from the fires
00:43but fortunately a member of the public found her. It took a long process, it was slow,
00:49but she was good enough in the end to be able to release her back into the wild
00:54and she's doing really well, like she's now got a baby of her own.
01:00Just because the bushfires have been less severe in the past two years,
01:11that doesn't mean the threats for koalas are gone.
01:14Gulliver was a koala joey that came in during the floods at the end of February this year.
01:21He was found on the ground, really wet, calling out for his mother.
01:25We couldn't find her so he had to come back here and be assessed
01:29and so with climate change, more and more of these extreme weather events are occurring.
01:33Since the bushfires, a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry
01:37found that New South Wales koalas are predicted to go extinct by 2050,
01:42which just highlights how much they are struggling and how much they need our protection.
01:47I for put in a joint nomination for koala to be uplisted from vulnerable to
01:52endangered in New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT.
01:55This nomination and this uplisting happened a few months ago in February
02:00and we are hoping that by this, the protection of the koala will improve.
02:05The first and most significant part of the program is to care for their habitat
02:10and especially when bushfires can ravage our country.
02:18The key core threats to koalas are habitat loss and climate change and that continues to happen.
02:24So even though the koalas were uplisted to endangered a couple of months ago,
02:28if we don't address those core key threats, we are in real risk of losing them.
02:34Increased urbanisation, chopping down all their trees, extreme weather events,
02:39they all contribute to loss of habitat, increased stress on the koalas,
02:44they're more susceptible to disease, they're also more likely to come into contact with dogs,
02:48so there are more dog attacks and hit by car.
02:51I am optimistic about the future of koalas in Australia, but we all need to do our part.
02:56We need to help plant trees, we need to have better protection for the species and their habitat,
03:03because koalas are such an iconic Australian animal
03:05that a future without them is just absolutely unthinkable.