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Starvation now threatens one of Australia’s few disease-free koala populations due to a lack of habitat, as wildlife rescue volunteers are overwhelmed with calls for help. By Alice Bishop.

Starvation threatens koalas on French Island

A French Island koala.

Credit: Humane World for Animals, R Charalambous

The koala my father found was crouched and thin, the fur on its neck patchy and its breathing sometimes laboured, other times slow. It sat alone in unmanaged scrub, facing the house built where ours had burnt down years ago.

Decades-old gums still stood, skeletons of themselves but stoically upright: trunks ghostly white among silver wattle.

It was the first koala we’d ever seen in the area in almost 40 years of living there – on Wurundjeri Country, along the outer north-eastern bushy fringe of Melbourne. The only koalas I’d seen growing up were printed on my pyjamas, in Country Fire Authority colouring-in sheets and in cartoons.

But there it was that day: a displaced national icon collapsing in slow motion.

It’s estimated there were once millions of koalas across the mainland – appearing in First Nations dreaming stories for tens of thousands of years. The koala was a totem animal for some cultural groups and food source for others, and specific rules applied to how they were handled.

Yet, it’s predicted that by 2050 – less than two-and-a-half centuries since the First Fleet arrived – koalas will be extinct in New South Wales, and at risk across all other mainland states and territories, without urgent government intervention.

Lisa Palma is the chief executive of Wildlife Victoria. She has also been a licensed wildlife carer for more than a decade. Just this year, Wildlife Victoria has fielded more than 180,000 calls for help regarding sick, injured and orphaned wildlife.

Calls to its emergency response service – backed by qualified volunteers and experienced wildlife veterinarians – have more than doubled in the past five years, leaving the service under strain.

Palma says these calls from concerned community members are expected to double again over the next five years, to about 300,000 a year, due to the acceleration of climate change. “Honestly, we don’t know how we’ll manage,” she says.

“It’s really important to understand, we’re a charity providing a public service – being 24/7 emergency response for sick and injured koalas and all wildlife. Our service is completely free of charge to the public but our annual operating costs this year will be around $7 million. We get only $500,000 from the state government. It’s hard.”

Palma says one of the biggest threats to koala populations is habitat loss and the lack of habitat corridors. The transplanted populations of koalas on southern Australia’s most famous island destinations for koala tourism – French, Raymond and Kangaroo islands – are struggling. “We’ve created all these landlocked pockets of koalas with nowhere to go.

“Probably the most common reason members of the public call us is for sick and injured koalas that are reported clinging to telephone poles … clinging to a farm fence, clinging to a house … It’s tough work. It’s very emotional.”

The CSIRO estimates koala numbers across the country have dwindled to as low as 700,000. There has been an explosion in Victorian populations, but they stem from a small surviving number. Settlers decimated the southern koala population during the fur trade of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leaving descendants with a host of genetic issues.

As the Victorian state government moves away from native logging, increased timber plantations are creating ideal breeding grounds, or “artificial koala havens”, says Evan Quartermain, programs director at Humane World for Animals. “But then these new habitats are, of course, harvested, leaving the animals at risk of injury and with insufficient connecting corridors of suitable natural habitat to survive in.”

Koalas will search for safety, often perishing on the way.

“The government, charities, volunteers, private landowners, the timber industry… we all have to work together,” says Palma. “Collaborate. Coordinate.”

French Island, Bunurong Country – home to Australia’s largest disease-free koala population – has become a site of particular concern. The rapid increase in numbers has resulted in the stripping of eucalyptus trees, and the koalas are now dying of starvation. Drought has also contributed to significant habitat loss, and replanting has been unsuccessful.

The Victorian government has historically managed the island’s koala numbers with contraception and some relocations, but experts are concerned about the unclear future implementation of these programs.

Koalas are notoriously sensitive to their surroundings, so relocations are often fraught. Many do not survive even the most carefully coordinated translocations due to shock, lack of specific eucalypt and other factors such as susceptibility to disease.

Wildlife Victoria also points out the resourcing issue for individual animals. “In rehabilitation, each koala will need daily fresh, healthy and suitable local leaf to eat.”

Lisa Palma adds that each koala in care needs more than five kilograms of specific leafy tree branches a day. “Like all our native species, koalas have very unique physiology; they need very specific care.”

Quartermain visited French Island this month to assess increasing reports of koalas in distress. He has years of such experience. During the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20 he was deployed as part of a small rescue team to conduct search-and- rescue operations for fire-affected wildlife, particularly koalas. About 60,000 koalas are reported to have been killed in the fires, with many more injured, traumatised and displaced.

On French Island, Quartermain said his team saw signs of koala distress: “stripped gums and koalas clinging to saplings much too close to the ground.”

Nevertheless, he says the situation there is not yet at crisis point. “What we definitely saw was a concerning situation that is escalating and there needs to be an immediate response.

“We need to see the numbers, urgent surveys need to be conducted. We need solid statistics on populations and to understand the island’s true carrying capacity to guide fertility control programs.”

There have been reports of mixed local sentiment about the koalas, with some supporting eradication. Yet Quartermain says the community is mostly just wanting more action for the welfare of the marsupials, along with the preservation of the native gums.

“French Island seems to be a place that is very proud of its koalas and a place that wants the best for them, but the community is clearly worried.

“The Australian public, I think, is really beginning to see that our biodiversity policies and laws are quite out of step with modern expectations. Things need to change.”

Positive recent government announcements, such as progress towards the establishment of the NSW Great Koala National Park, are cause for hope for many working in the field. However, these advances are undermined by controversial government actions, such as the largely unadvertised aerial euthanasia at Budj Bim National Park in western Victoria this April.

Snipers hired by the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) shot 1061 koalas from helicopters after bushfire destroyed large areas of manna gum, the animal’s main food source.

Accused of covertly initiating a cull, the Victorian government maintains the operation was a necessary welfare exercise, as access and koala assessment from the ground was too difficult.

Animal welfare groups have since taken the state government to court, requesting greater transparency, ethical consideration, and a longer-term strategy for koala protection.

When asked about the DEECA operation at Budj Bim, Evan Quartermain says his organisation is waiting for answers but remains positive about the future of koalas in southern Australia. For a long time, he says, governments haven’t been great at putting the environment and wildlife first, “but things are really changing – people across political parties are hungry for it”.

“We should be spending a lot of money and effort to right our wrongs of the past,” he continues, “to get Australia’s animals thriving again. If done right, the response at French Island could be a blueprint for future operations.”

My father took the emaciated koala he found on Wurundjeri Country, bundled in a faded fluorescent car boot towel, to a professional Wildlife Victoria volunteer.

A veterinary assessment showed the animal had underlying organ issues and severe tooth wear, known as masticatory failure, and was humanely euthanised.

My father’s was just one of 180,000 agonising calls the overstretched and unpaid volunteers take each and every year, with so many more to come.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 22, 2025 as "Bad news bears".

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