Hidden detail on road sign highlights growing 'problem' in Aussie suburbs: 'Reverse domino effect'
New developments mean critical wildlife species face an increasingly difficult reality in parts of Australia.
While most of us were getting ready for bed on Monday night, a sad situation was unfolding in one Aussie suburb. Clinging to the back of a road sign was an iconic marsupial that belonged up a tree.
Although koalas are used to promote Australia as a wildlife-friendly tourism destination, they are facing extinction in Queensland and NSW, and are listed as endangered. Rescuer John Knights was almost asleep when a phone call came through about the displaced animal.
“It just had this 'what do I do next' expression on its face,” he told Yahoo News on Tuesday.
Had Knights not arrived, the animal’s prospects were not good. He was beside a major road, and close to an industrial estate in the Brisbane suburb of Mount Gravatt East. Like most of Queensland’s southeast, large backyards that once contained trees have been bulldozed and subdivided, increasing human density while forcing out koalas.
“When you decide to knock your house down, that's one less tree and a few bushes gone. But then the bloke over the road does it, and the bloke around the corner does it,” Knights said.
“These koalas have no sanctuary when they're trying to get from one area to another. So they're just wandering around hopelessly lost. And people say: Isn't it wonderful to see these urban koalas. They're not urban koalas. They're frightened lost animals because we put a road in where they want to live.”
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Koalas a sign of a healthy ecosystem
Knights describes koalas as an umbrella species, as when they flourish, it means the rest of the environment is also healthy. And seeing so many regularly displaced is sign of a "problem" facing Australia's suburban wildlife.
“If you create good habitat for koalas, everything that lives underneath their trees has a happy home,” he said.
“From possums, to gliders, the owls, the birds that live in the trees, the animals that live on the ground, the insects that live in the bush, the microbes that keep everything working — it's a reverse domino effect.”
Why are so many koalas in our suburbs?
This spring, Knight is on track to have responded to 200 callouts by the end of the month. During the season, males looking for mates, and sub-adults looking for new territory often find themselves on roads and in backyards.
That’s because the forest they once called home has been destroyed to make way for new developments. Crossing between the fragmented remnants of habitat often means traversing suburbia.
The callout to help the koala on the road sign on Monday was Knights’ second for the day. Earlier a koala climbed up a power pole at nearby Camp Hill. It was brought down safely and released into nearby bushland.
Australia's environment laws failing to protect endangered species
Sadly, finding places to release koalas is becoming increasingly difficult, as koala habitat continues to be destroyed. An independent review of Australia’s nature protection laws under the Morrison government in 2020 found they are “ineffective”, “weak” and “tokenistic”. While there have been some reforms since the Albanese government was elected in 2022, endangered species are continuing to lose habitat at an alarming rate.
A Worldwide Fund for Nature report this week found there has been a 73 per cent decline in global wildlife populations in 50 years. While an investigation by Wilderness Society this week found 300,000 animals a year are being displaced or killed by Tasmania’s logging industry every year, including endangered species.
Yahoo News has been reporting on koala displacement since 2019, and the problem has only continued to worsen.
Two weeks ago, in Queensland’s Moreton Bay, rescuers were called to help three koalas desperately clinging to power poles over a period of just 14 hours. While on the Gold Coast the federal and state governments are building a major new freeway, the Coomera Connector, through important koala habitat.
The Queensland government has refused to release environmental reports about its impact, claiming they are “ecologically sensitive”. But rescuers say it's routinely displacing wildlife, and because of ongoing development across the Gold Coast, they believe the city’s urban koalas face extinction.
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