00:00Clinging to a fluffy koala toy more than double her size, orphaned Joey Adjuni is the latest
00:06rescue for volunteer Emma Meadows.
00:08Adjuni was actually found by herself in the middle of Appen Road just after midnight by
00:13a lovely gentleman who obviously swerved to avoid hitting her and then stopped and picked
00:18her up off the road.
00:19She came into care at 580 grams, so she's put on just over 100 grams in the week and
00:25a little bit that she's been in care.
00:27But the baby marsupial is a lucky survivor.
00:30Her mother was found nearby suffering critical injuries after being hit by a car.
00:35For Meadows, it is a familiar story as Australia's rapidly expanding cities increasingly force
00:39koalas to risk roads and dog attacks in search of eucalyptus trees or a mate.
00:45It's hard.
00:46It's hard at times.
00:47You know, seeing what we see, those 40 koalas that have been hit on Appen Road in the last
00:51two years, I've pretty much pulled every single one of those bodies off the road or taken
00:55them to the vet to be, you know, to die.
00:58So it's huge.
00:59It's a massive toll.
01:02Estimates of koala numbers in the wild vary greatly, with the latest government data suggesting
01:06there are between 224,000 and 524,000 animals.
01:12In 2022, the Australian government listed koalas in New South Wales, Queensland and
01:17the Australian Capital Territory as threatened.
01:21Koala wandering for food and shelter also poses another risk, one that experts warn
01:25could wipe out the animals within decades.
01:29A large number of the populations have chlamydia within them.
01:33There's one really significant population in south-west Sydney which is chlamydia free
01:38and that's the population that everybody's very jealously guarding.
01:41There is no guarantee into the future that every one of the koalas that gets out doesn't
01:49become infected by a population that's close by and then come back in.
01:53Professor Annabel Olsen, whose wildlife hospital is in the heart of Sydney's last chlamydia-free
01:58koala population, says without action, the disease, which causes infertility and even
02:03death, could further devastate the species.
02:07If we continue on the trajectory we're on with habitat destruction, you know, our grandchildren
02:13or at least their grandchildren are going to see maybe koalas in a zoo if they're lucky.
02:17It'll be the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger all over again.
02:20But University of Sunshine Coast researcher Samuel Phillips may have a new vaccine that
02:25could bolster efforts to save the fluffy tree dwellers.
02:28We were able to show that a vaccine that targets a specific gene within chlamydia can have
02:34a positive effect on the koala population.
02:37Our plan is to roll this out in addition to a lot of the methods that are currently being
02:42developed to protect koala populations that are at risk.
02:46Phillips' team vaccinated and monitored 165 koalas for 10 years and found inoculated marsupials
02:53developed chlamydia later in life and the mortality was reduced by 64 per cent.
02:58A Queensland trial of the vaccination used in conjunction with traffic and predator controls
03:04was so successful that a local koala population that had been doomed for extinction within
03:0910 years instead rebounded.
03:12Chlamydia vaccine research will probably be quite pivotal for populations that we're
03:18trying to protect from the disease of infertility if you like, but I have to stress that this
03:24research is in its infancy and in the immediate future there's no magic pill that's going
03:30to fix this chlamydia problem.
03:33For Olsen and her team, the vaccine could be a vital defence, but she says better conservation
03:39is still within reach.
03:41While it seems doom and gloom at the moment, we can afford to be a little bit positive
03:45and say we still have the potential to make this right.
03:50It won't be tomorrow, it won't be next year, but as long as we are all in that mindset
03:55that this is an achievable task, then it is going to be possible for our grandchildren
04:00and their grandchildren to actually see koalas in the wild.
04:07The time to act was already yesterday, last year, last decade.
04:12I'm scared it's too late.
04:15I continue to do what I do because somebody needs to make a difference and I feel that
04:20this is one way in the world that I can make a difference.
04:23It breaks my heart because I want everybody's children to be able to see what we've got
04:26and I want them to see them in the wild.
04:28We need to have wild populations and we really need to act and we need to do something because
04:32it's not okay to leave this planet without this species and that's what our generation
04:38and the generations before us are doing.
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