Two years after Australia's bush fires, how are the koalas doing?

About 60,000 koalas died, wounded, or were displaced in Australia's bush fires.   Two years later, how are the koalas doing?

Transcript

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.