There are competing theories about how male koalas go about procreating. The ‘king koala’ theory proposes that a powerful male dominates breeding and ‘holds the fabric of koala society in the palm of his mighty paw’, to quote Koala expert Dr Bill Ellis. In contrast the ‘traveling salesman’ model suggests that well, it can be more opportunistic and egalitarian. I gather the ‘traveling salesman’ model is supported by DNA analysis but the ‘king koala’ believers have the numbers.
There are obviously significant implications for Koala conservation planning depending on the model used/applied.
It would also seem important for conservation planning that we know something about how many koalas there are in Australia and also where they are.
The Australian Koala Foundation claims there are fewer than 100,000 Koalas in Australia with numbers on the decline.
I get a total of 120,000 just by counting up a few know populations:
59,000 mulgalands of southwest Queensland,
25,00 southeast Queensland,
8,200 NSW North Coast, and
27,000 Kangaroo Island, South Australia.
According to Simon Baltais from the Wildlife Preservation Society the population in Redlands Shire (just south of Brisbane) is the premier koala population in Australia.” I wonder what he means?
I would be interested to know if anyone has any information regarding the size of the Koala population in Victoria? I gather it is/was huge? Has it recovered from the bushfires?
Also how many Koalas are there in the Pillaga-Goonoo forests of NW NSW?
I am right now trying to writing a piece on Koalas for the next IPA Review. Given the interest generated by my column in The Land some weeks ago.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Hahahaha! This is possibly my favourite opening gambit to a post anywhere ever!
‘There are competing theories about how male koalas go about procreating.’
Erect penises, mate, it’s all in the erect penises.
And I loved the ‘travelling salesman’ he-koala – a tweed suited marsupial roaming the bush breaking she-koala hearts with his egalitarian attitude. Be done with the IPA propaganda, you should be making a name for yourself as the May Gibbs of the blogosphere.
I’ve got a mate who professes to be some kind of enviro-science boffin, and he reckons koala populations fluctuate: they root and give birth and eat until their population is so large their ability to consume outweighs the amount of food available for consumption, then the whole lot of them starve to death.
Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned there for we humans…
I know: koalas are astonishingly stupid!
Personally, I’m interested in whether anyone actually gives a damn about koalas anyway…
There is a grain of truth in the sarcastic note of “production line 12” above. Any estimate of koala population for any area must be in relation to the climatic cycle. Because there is very significant variation in populations due to seasonal and climatic changes.
It doesn’t appear to have dawned on the green movement that Koalas are, after all, leaf eaters and the supply of leaf is very closely linked to the incidence of “effective” rainfall.
By effective rainfall I mean total rainfall minus runoff. Rainfall that has actually entered a soil profile and is subsequently transpired by plants. In much of NSW & Qld the highest rainfall years usually supply only average or below average soil moisture profiles. This is because seasonal flood peaks fall on full soil profiles and run off into streams without contributing to forest, crop or pasture growth. And the highest Autumn flood peaks are usually followed by extended dry Springs.
This means that some of the best seasons for forest growth and the entire leaf based food chains are recorded as average or below average rainfall years. These will usually have comparatively poor Autumn rains but be balanced by superior falls in Spring/Summer.
Whenever this occurs the dependent wildlife get three consecutive abundant half years and their populations increase accordingly. The normal good half/bad half year scenario is only sufficient to maintain populations while an extended dry will obviously produce population decline in Koalas or any other leaf, flower or sap dependent species.
Sharpe(1), for example, recorded an 80% decline in the population of Squirrel Gliders (preceded by marked decline in body weight) between September and November 2000 which coincided with extremely dry conditions and lack of flowering of E. siderophloia. His study in the well watered NSW North Coast covered more than 5 years and demonstrated that the post decline population was much closer to the long term norm than the good season population surges.
The most significant feature of the population peaks, and the corresponding declines, was that most of the change was in the adolescent cohort. The majority of the population increase were doomed to starve 12 months later.
This has important implications for so-called Koala protection. For the first response of the increased adolescent population to a developing food shortage is dispersal. And it is in this dispersal stage when road and dog kill numbers peak. And one can only conclude that the animal shelters and self styled “wildlife rescuers” are merely delaying a natural population variation while demonising their own species as ecological vandals.
It is also worth noting that the incidence of trees flowering (an important element of wildlife carrying capacity) is much higher in variegated farmland and the urban/forest interface than in pure forest ecosystems.
This produces an improvement in both the base populations of dependent species and the severity of their seasonal population changes.
We can say with absolute certainty that, despite significant seasonal fluctuation, the Redlands “Koala Coast” populations have increased dramically over the past half century for the simple reason that most of the forest in that region did not even exist 50 to 100 years ago. It was the first part of Queensland to be settled and it was the first to be cleared.
It is not a “remnant” Koala community but, rather, a regrowth one. So a true estimate of Koala population of , say, 100,000 would then need to add plus or minus 80,000 for seasonal variation and then adjust for remnant or regrowth populations.
Reference.
Sharpe, David J. “Effect of flowering patterns on a population of Squirrel Gliders Petaurus norfolcensis in north-east NSW” 2004. Southern Cross University.
I don’t know how many koalas there are but are they any good to eat? I know in Dad and Dave (On my selection) that Dad got upset when Dave told the Pastor they were eating bear.
Waht would a travelling sales koala actually sell and if it’s only sex isn’t that Koala prostitution. Anyway the Purple Wiggle or is that Smarty reckons they are dieing out because no trees no me, so as an obvious wildlife expert I’ll have to believe him.
I was just wondering is that really the true population of the koalas because i was on another site and it said there was only 8,000
koalas left in the wild anyway great report thing i really like OKAY IF YOU COULD JUST EMAIL ME BACK THAT WOULD BE GREAT!!!
I was wondering how you went with collecting data on the trend of the koala population. I am now looking at finding that data and also have come up with conflicting info.
So far I have: $10m in the early 1900’s, a slaughter of about $3m in the 1920’s followed closely by protection legislation, about 400,000 in 1986 – a conflicting report of about 1m in vic alone in 1998, 100,000 in 2003 and your report of 120,000 in 2005. This is probably enough to prepare a basic trend graph with my Grade 4 students, but I would love to find a more accurate source.
Cool stuff, i remeber when i was young i had a koala. There used to be heaps at our local park. Now they are all gone. Speaking of gone once i was at my friends place and i went to the toliet and i came back and all my drink was gone.
please send me some information about koala bears
how many koalas did there used to be????? or what percentage of them are gone?????
how many koalas did there used to be????? or what percentage of them are gone?????
how many koalas did there used to be????? or what percentage of them are gone?????
how many koalas did there used to be????? or what percentage of them are gone?????