all right i think we might get going just want to say good evening everyone welcome to koalas in the northern
tablelands uh firstly before anything else i want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land in which we're
all calling in from so i'm on anawan land and i pay my respects to elders past and present and
to any first nations people on the webinar today my name is elsie baker and i'm a project
officer with northern tablelands local land services based in armadale and before we get going with the webinar
just a little bit of housekeeping we'll have two presentations and then we'll have 20 minutes of questions
and you'll see that there's a control panel in the top right hand corner of your
screen and you'll see that there is a little red arrow to the left of that which
collapses and reinstates the control panel um as we're talking please type any
questions you have into that control panel there's a little area where you can type questions in they will go directly to us no one else
can see them and then i'll relay them to our panelists later on
so i should also say that you can hear us but we can't hear you um
and also that this webinar is being recorded and it will be distributed via email tomorrow
so i'd like to introduce you to our two panelists roman andes des anderson is
from southern new england landcare and he is undertaking an awesome koala project in the armadale area
and he'll talk to you about that in his presentation our organizations local land services
and southern new england landcare work in partnership with each other and he's calling in from anawin lands as
well roman christescu is from the university of sunshine coast and she has been
working with us over the last four years conducting research around the northern tablelands and she's calling in from
cubby cubby country oh to you roman thank you elsie welcome everyone and
thanks for joining us so i will start
my talk that's it um
so yeah my name is dr roman christesco and i like to acknowledge the traditional custodian of the land in
which i speak tonight the kabhi kabhi people and pay my respect to the elders
past present and emerging and i also want to acknowledge and thank
all the people that have been collecting that data over the last few years and some of them are here
in those pictures so an overview of the talk tonight
i'm not gonna not that i need to but i've brought us through it in any way um
why do we care what do you want to study koala what do we collect data and it's been a few years now that we do and and
if you haven't been convinced yet i will give you a few reasons of why koala are so cool and that's um transfer then us to the
cool country koala project and that has been um led by the northern table and
local land services over the last few years and then i'll finish by um
a few ideas of how you yourself can contribute um to protecting koala in the northern table
all right why so they call so there's a million of reason and i'm not gonna go through all of them but i'm
gonna give you a few examples of reason one because they're great two they're very special as a species
and three and unfortunately i think all of us um here know that they are vulnerable
so coal are great and they're just a fantastic species and i think um when you study them it's very lucky you keep
learning more and more funny facts about them so i'll share a few of my favorites it was proven a few years ago that koala
males are big liars basically um as you have ever heard the sound of a koala below and it's very
loud and normally in the animals and animal kingdom the bigger the animal the bigger
the beetle and so if koala weren't lying they should be the size of a blue shadow so obviously they're a much smaller
animal and they've got a special and you know apparatus and that makes them able to create such big loud sound
baby koala very little no fact maybe um not the most
pleasant but so important it's not any kind of poodle it's a special poo it's a bit more liquid and it comes straight
out of the second and it's called the pup and the pup is critical to survival of baby cola because it contains a lot of
microbiome the bacteria and all those uh helpers and that are critical to digest
very tough eucalyptus leaves so koala are often called koala bears
but they're absolutely not related to bears at all you probably know that maybe you didn't know that their closest
relative their cousin are the wombats interestingly like us koala have
individual fingerprints so if a caller ever was to commit a crime we could kind of identify that koala and
just as we mentioned and also their nose pattern is unique so that's a nice picture here of the little
pink pattern on the black nose of this koala and that koala is going to keep
that pattern for its life so that's also a way to recognize them so a few more koala less funny but
interesting to know i thought um i go through them quickly they're very fussy eater that might be
quite well known in any specific area they only eat a handful of
species of trees and they sleep a lot probably about 18 hours a day
they can live any anything between 10 and 18 years in the wild
and their home range is very viable so it's very hard for scientists to say this is how much habitat or area a koala
will use during its life because it really depends where this quality and it can be as small as two hectares and as
large as 300 nectar the females start breeding at about
two-year-old and then and they usually will produce one joy every year and might not survive but they're very
um consistent and the joy and like you know all the martial people are born
very small and very early on only after 35 days of gestation
they stay hidden in the patch so you can see the pouch bulging more and more and then after six months they've probably
reached their peak cuteness although it's debated because they're quite cheap for a long time um but yeah they can
start riding on the on the back of the of their mom for another six months until the new one is full
so those were my funny facts but koala are also very special as an animal so first in term of evolutionary um tree if
you want if you look at where the koala sits um it sits very much on its own a
lot of the other species and including other species of koala have now become extinct so as i was saying wombat is the
closest relative but still you know it's it's not that close as far as relatives go so you know they represent a very
special step of the evolution and and no one else can replace where they where they stand in the evolutionary tree
they're also special and specialized so that i call that the koala colon drum and that's something that really
fascinates me um as i said i have a very tough diet that's why they need all those bacteria to help digest so it's a
very low nutrient diet for a start and so often when you survive on a low
nutrient diet you need large quantity of food think about a cow but the issue is
cola is obviously they live in trees so they cannot be as big as a cow otherwise the tree would collapse
so they are limited by that our arboreal life in size which limits their gut size as
well so to start you know that's really putting them on the edge right because they
should be eating a lot more but they can't because they can't be that much bigger they can't fit much more guts in
their stomach the second thing is the diet they're surviving on is very highly toxic
and so they cannot eat too much of it because they need to give time to the bacteria to actually detoxify all that
and nasty chemical um soup and so
because of both low nutrient and high toxicity toxicity that means they cannot really create fat reserves so they kind
of need to um eat every day and with their you know good size constraint that
also mean they cannot put fat away and it's just all of that kind of interacts
and combines to make um them really living on the edge and so if anything happens like um the koala are quite
vulnerable to that they really need for instance to have access to food every day
so that's quite um special and particular to them
unfortunately that's not so particular to koala like many other wildlife in australia and koala have been
experiencing a lot of decline that's the decline over all their range and in all the
population they've been studied and have now been classified vulnerable and across new south wales queensland
and act however this is under review following the fires um in 2019 2020 and
um probably within a few weeks there will be classifiers endangered
and the threat they're facing are quite well known there's this um well-studied reason that the koala have been
declining the first one probably still um would be habitat loss modification
and fragmentation of koala habitats um another important one is disease
which is unfortunate but the clear disease is really pushing some population um in sharp declines
vehicle strike and dog attack are linked um of course to um human presence and
are also problematic and then um in some part of their range we've seen some indicators die back and
finally of course as we talk bush fire and all the threats really related to climate change so that includes
heat wave and drought for instance all right so those are all the reason
why um the cool country caller project started in 2016 and involved a lot of partners
and it was really on the back of um the lls putting out the northern table
and quality recovery strategy and in that strategy and
you know many important goals but we really fit in that improvement of baseline koala data
and so the action that we're um you know promoted in the strategy where to undertake survey in some area of
priority i will talk about that and then establish survey protocol
and enable and increase public reporting of citing this is something that's going to come back over and over again in this
talk is the importance of each and every one of us and to report any koala they see
obviously you know there's government and there's research and we are there out there collecting data but we can
never be as many as um you know everyone that's got a property basically and so
there's there's um really strengths in in putting effort together
and all reporting where where we see koala and that really is well used and
you'll see that so this is an example of how that data is used so when before we started the survey all
that was known was where citing had been reported in the past so expert came and had a look at the sighting those are the
dots on the map and then they tried to create those priority area for survey those are area where population of kuala
were thought to be you know existing based on those um historical sighting but we needed to
confirm what was the current status and that's really um how we targeted the survey we did
so what did we do so we did some pills of it to find koalas cats and that mainly involve um
that big nose that is not a quarter nose this time it's a dog news and that's the survey method that we use is based on
koalas cats which is the first picture and we use um detection dog that are specially trained on those scats and
they are very quick and accurate way to map where koala live so not just where
kuala is today but those cats are produced many times a day and they stay in the environment for many weeks and
months and so it really tells us all the area that has been used by kwara in the in the recent time
we ended some koala uh flora survey we also assessed uh some threats and
i'll go quicker through those points i'm really going to show you a lot of of the map and the places where we've been but
i'll touch on chlamydia and recently we have also looked at genetics in in some of the strongholds
of the northern table and and this year we are coming back and we're coming back with um not only
detection dogs but drones so um stay and stay tuned
so first the result of a flora survey and i'm not going to read through all that slide but i just wanted to put it
there in case you know um those uh plan community type and you have them on your property or around those are good spots
to go and look for koala because this is where we find them most often um during our surveys
i'm also not going to read through that complicated list thank goodness um but
know that we have looked at what trees also are used across um the northern tabernan and so northern uh table and
local and services would have access to um that data and they can inform you especially if you want to for instance
plant trees that are really well used by koala on your property you could get local information
this is where i'm going to spend most of my time talking about the data of present absence
so the survey that we've conducted since 2016. so i'm going to go year by year and then put them all together so
basically we kind of ranked um from the area of priority that were the highest
priority so where we really expected to have koala and then we went down the line so you will see that we had a lot
more presence of the start of the survey than the end that doesn't mean it's a decline we just target a different area
so the first year ourselves we went around in varel and longer and well there was a lot of green dots all the
green dots will be equal a positive sight and red dots will be quite a negative sight um
so all together about 30 percent one in free sight i had koala presence
and and we were um sad to um to see that we couldn't find a lot of koala any
longer in the ashford area in the south springbok ecological went
and surveyed around armydale walsha and wendock and they found about one every two sites had quarter presents
and especially a large population around army there the following year we focused on um
you know some other of those priority sites so those are the orange blob if you want that the expert had put on the
map and that puts um their foot that's where koala and were more likely to have
um persisted from the historical record so again historical record are those little blue dots and
then green is called our presence and red is called our absence so we found about one siding four that
had quarter presence and um really around ten to field at that time um had the most koala detected
all of that still based on cats so the following year we went um and focused around um
finga and bundara and also between walsh and now and doc a little bit trying to fill the gap in between the priority
area and we found less presence and then last year again um quite full
presence but again because um a lot of the sites were in places and we were
less expect expecting to find cola but also we had um a very wet uh season and
that also um means that the scat decay a lot quicker so we can find them for less
long if you want so those absence mean recent absence instead of a few weeks or few months absence
so putting it all together and start building a map of where um if you want
those priority area those population have persisted and where we can't find
them when you compare to you know um all the records collected in the last um 70
years really and that shows you you know that some some of the area like imperial
the growl amidel are really still very very much um
important for koala and some area are probably new around tend to feel that weren't nicely on the map before we
started the survey however some of the area and like um immerville or ashford
have seen um potentially declining colons so in terms of threats i'm not going to
go through all the threats but i just wanted to show you that that is concerning chlamydia which is a
very um important threat and and the difference you can find across the landscape and the way we got that data was to
analyze gas so i you know i'm a big fan as an ecologist of scat survey because
not only you can map where an animal has been but you can also and bring that scat back to the lab and start studying
and the animal genetics the pathogen and the disease they carry and the microbiome so all those bacteria that
are present in the scats and even some hormones as well so it's very interesting um you know to start adding
all the layers so as we were talking about invariable and and avidel are really koala hotspot they're really
places where there's still a strong koala population um but the disease or the presence of the
chlamydian pathogen is much higher in armadale and than it is in invaria
and in terms of genetics and basically this is where we also collected scats and we extracted the koala dna
and we ran some program and and interrogate the data and it told us that imperial and armydale should be
considered to separate the population so there's not a lot of genetic
exchange if you want between those two areas for the core
so that was um in a nutshell about what i think it's probably five years
now of survey and so that's what what we've been busy doing uh with lls and other partners and
but i wanted to really finish this talk about what you can be doing because um there is a lot we can do all of us um to
help cola conservation and i always say it takes a village and to save koala and i believe you know both researcher and
government have their role to play but um you know anyone that um lives in kora country also has
an important world fair so i'm going to walk through those points engage with your koala network
help increase koala knowledge report koala that will become familiar now at this stage of the talk protect and
restore koala habitat and try to decrease the threat that koala are facing
so in terms of network and ntls has produced a facebook page that um
i encourage you to join the northern table and threaten species network and it's obviously broader than the koala
but there's a lot of very interesting uh information being shared you can um report your sighting let your community
know get people excited that koala are just there in your backyard post your pictures it's always really nice to see
what they look like um and you can obviously be kept in the loop so find information extend knowledge and you
know events such as tonight will be addressed advertised through the such network so yeah get in touch with the
people that are also interested and and forces
so one thing that you can do with and encourage your family and friend to do
um is to record koala and koala signs so that's um you know that's really basic information
that um when nothing else exists that's always um where we go to and when where
government goes to to understand where they quality so it's really critical to gather that information and you can
value add a lot so i'm gonna um walk you through a few things that you can check when you have found a koala and that
really makes your data a much richer and more important data set so is it male or
female koala so there are signs that you can look for males are generally bigger although when they're high in the tree
that's really hard to assess the size of a koala so all the things that i look for are
mouth originally what i call deutsche really it's the fact that they're um in
front of their um chest is a gland that produce a smelly liquid that they probably use to
communicate with other men and that kind of becomes brown and tainted and
especially as the male age whereas female always have a very wide clean
front now have a bigger nose they call that a roman nose i think and
female a bit more pointy and that makes female generally a little bit cuter
sorry i i i don't want any male to be offended i have a bit um you
know male 1 uh lying and their dirtier and they're not as cute as female it's
only for koala don't take it personally um but so that's the thing that i look
for um to look for male female of course if there's a joy on the back it's also a female
and now this this uh part of the talk is very important because chlamydia is a major threat um to the koala and is
easily recognizable um in the in the wild and if everyone is um aware of the
sign you can really help koala and because chlamydial disease is treatable
but only if we pick it up early enough so that becomes really critical you know in terms of management to have as many
eyes out there looking for signs of sickness and we describe them as pink
eyes so that's um because the eye become very infected and and create a lot of
soft tissue and dirty bottom and that comes from urinary tract infection so
this is how it looks like when it's really bad in those post picture and but especially the eye one ocular
disease is is having good sign of success and urinary tract disease when it's very
late it's hard to treat but it's also very painful so you really need to get in touch with wildlife rescue group at
this stage and usually healthy koala do not let us touch them so they are quite curious as
an animal so it's not a hundred percent uh rule but if you find a koala push straight at the bottom of the tree for a
long period of time that koala is really struggling and it needs to be taken to a vet as quickly as possible don't pick
them up yourself don't call the wildlife risky groups all right another thing that you can do
and especially if you are lucky enough that you have caller visiting your property you start recognizing them and
you can name them and then you keep a little book or on your computer and you put all your
picture and you look for and to sign and you know of um of the pattern the the
pink area of the nose and um those are six different individual in one of my
research projects and i think they really look all so different
know your scats so that's my little obviously um little love because i do think there's
so much you can tell just from scratch you don't need to just wait for seeing the koala it's very special but it can
be quite rare so look at your feet walk around and um and
search for those koalas cats that can stay in in the environment for longer so it can tell you whether your property is
called a habitat so they're quite symmetrical and bullet shaped they're not jelly bean shaped i will show you
some um that are jelly bean they are usually larger at one end and skinnier at the other end they're about
a centimeter and a half lengths for an adult koala and they're hard to break they're very dense school
are excellent at chewing their food and so they're kind of like a food processor
but be careful because there are some that are going to trick you and those
are all possum scats and some of them are easier to recognize as possums cat the jelly
bean one or the the fat one don't look very koala but sometimes they can trick you and those cats are possum but if you
break them they probably smell less you carry just less knives than koalas cats and there's also they're also less dense
and sometimes if they have insect bits then they're definitely possum and not quota
so now that you have all that wealth of information with you about your sighting and the health and the sex of the koala
and and all those things report it and you can either report it on your computer or you can also download apps
on your phone and like osata's app or i spy caller and that allows you to do it on on the run when you are out there and
you can you know give the coordinate and do everything automatically so easy right to download all those apps
and learn how to use them so if you're not comfortable with those apps and if you have um
you know need a little bit of help then luckily elsie and des are really happy to take your call they can walk you
through it but they can also record your sighting every sighting counts so don't don't let technology stop you
all right protect restore habitat is a very critical thing and that also needs to happen for the koala as i was saying
before it's the main threat currently so protect tree if you have some around your farm and plant more trees there's
lots of benefit associated with planting trees and if you don't yourself have a property where you can do that and you
know join or help landcare and they're often really strategic corridor planting
program that you can support so um they're fun activity and on top of helping kuala align all the other
animals and finally last thing you can do yourself is try to decrease the other
threats that koala are facing restrain your dog and that's practically at night
when croat on the move drive carefully especially the skandone
and report any second ngo call out to wildlife rescue group because sometimes um you know we can still save them
and this will talk to you more about that finally um you can put out water when there's heat
wave and um recently the university of sydney has developed a blinky drinker and you can install them on your
property so that koala always have access to water they don't necessarily um you know are known to drink a lot but
they do drink a lot and especially um you know when it's very hot but however if you find a koala
i just wanted to say and because that's a problem that is often found by wildlife risk group do not give them
water from a water bottle put a ball out because otherwise that might go in their lungs and cause trouble
and that's it for me and i just wanted to share that you can follow that northern table and threaten
species network on facebook and as well as as our group if you want to keep in touch thank you very much and i think
we will answer a question at the end of this talk
so
um thanks ramon i'm hoping everybody can hear me now and uh you can see my screen
um because i hear a lot from this end um firstly thank you um to the northern
tableland slack land services for hosting this today um and i'd also like to acknowledge the
annan people as the traditional custodians of the land and pay my respects to elders past and present
what i'm going to talk about today has a lot of connection to romance
presentation and there will be some overlap but that really emphasizes what the
project is about we are a koala partnership project through landcare
that really relies on building partnerships with both
industry organizations and most importantly the community um to try and and get some koala
conservation actions uh underway and embedded in in people's
thinking um pretty much over the next 10 years while we still have a chance to
ensure those populations the background to our particular project
at landcare was born out of the 2018 new south wales koala strategy
um that was responsible for hosting a number of regional conservation koala
teams which were based uh on the north coast the mid north coast and the
southern highlands the land care hosted regional partnership came about in 2020
so we've had a year to get it underway and to start to build some of those partnerships which are critical to the
success of the project the aim is to reflect
the former minister for the environment matt keane's words to ensure the survival of the koala in
the wild for the next 100 years to support that we're looking at
particular activities which form the four key pillars of the strategy and they are to
ensure that koala habitat is conserved and to develop further habitat
to con to do that through community action so whether it's private or public lands um to ensure that there is a
conservation land for koalas to ensure that the safety and health of koalas
is uh ongoing and embedded in people's minds which remain
touched on a little bit there and most importantly to keep building our knowledge on how those populations
interact and survive uh on the left hand side of the screen there's a little bit of an example of
the cyclical nature of the project which is to firstly raise awareness
um to seek assistance through existing knowledge and to build on that
uh importantly to foster involvement right across the community and to build
partnerships within that involvement
southern new england landcare are hosting the northern tablelands koala partnership
within the region that's pretty much surrounds armadale within a
40k radius so at this stage we're focused on the area that extends to gyro in the
north uh kentucky uh south of urala balamombi in the east and kingstown in
the west something to notice with this map is the purple shaded area
which has got my cursor around it at the moment uh that area outlined is known as a
koala area of regional significance um it's remain
highlighted in her speech it's um where
most of the koala populations have been identified it's not exclusive to
what might go on in areas that aren't within that polygon
but that does form an area where we know there are viable populations of of koalas at present
and what is particular to this project is not just what's happening within that
shaded area but how to connect habitat and koala conservation in the
areas that link the eastern fore country where the national parks
are bounded and also the vegetation corridors that extend up towards the
north west through bandara tinga and ultimately through in varela up
towards the border
so why are we here and why we why are we looking at some the importance of koala conservation
the study sets uh have come out of recent data indicate that the northern
tablelands contains about five to ten percent of the new south wales koala population
um while that figure is low when compared to the overall population it
does indicate that there is a viable population of koalas on the northern tablelands and more importantly that the
northern tablelands is potentially a koala refuge area
which means that's under uh development pressures in coastal
areas and climate change towards the west that the northern tablelands really
stands out as one of the areas that may be a suitable koala refuge
when impacts start to accumulate the direct threats that
again roman touched on particularly habitat loss in coastal regions and habitat
degradation disease including chlamydia
vehicle strikes dogs and livestock is one that not many people know at this
stage but particularly on on rural lands cattle have been known in particular
to sometimes potentially kill koalas but
some injured koalas when they share similar
water bodies and lastly wheat and pest management is also critical
because koalas can find it difficult to move through areas that are weed infested
but also the impact of weeds on habitat areas can reduce the
the health of the tree and the attractiveness of that tree as a feed tree for koalas
to overarch these problems we've got insidious threats such as climate change and natural disasters
which many people would know back in 2019
we had a particular natural disaster with climate change and drought which
really impacted koalas which i'll discuss in a minute
but um firstly i think it's important to remember why we're here and why we want
to protect these little guys um not only are they our national
emblem and identity um but they're recognized overseas as um as being
something that's unique to australia and therefore that gives us a responsibility
um to care for the koala populations and on a broader level our environment i've got a picture on the left of
an example of habitat planting on someone's property over the last 30 years or so these
plantings have become critical in connecting koala corridors between the
coast and tablelands and ensuring that they have
protected corridors to move between areas where they might find
suitable feed trees it's important to remember that for every gap in those connected vegetation
corridors the threats of koalas through predation or vehicle strike
is magnified um so that some really
emphasizes the the importance of having land holders and and community uh in
general involved in in helping with habitat conservation
lastly we are now in an age where as uh rahman again
indicated we we're looking at the koala's status from moving to
endangered from the current level of vulnerable and it's foreseeable that without action
we may be in a situation where koalas are confined to zoos and
that would be a situation for our next generation that would be difficult to explain
i've got a little quote underneath from uh the former mayor of urala michael pierce who was kind enough to do an
interview through this project last year he's from his position um out towards in the
gary on a bushland block i think he coined a a really accurate phrase in
saying that most people a priest appreciate their role in keeping wildlife safe
and he's one of the many people that i think would like to do something as long as they can
see or understand where those those opportunities to to be involved
might lie
as i said earlier the the impact of the natural disasters in 2019 and 2020 was
significant for our existing koala population there have been estimates that some
indicate that we may have lost up to a third of the existing population
and aside from that the amount of habitat that was lost
through the bushfires equates to about one quarter in new south wales
uh to what was their previous to the bush fights
one of the sad facts to come out of that uh natural disaster
was the increase in temperatures and the incidence of fire was something that was
um not experienced before uh unprecedented on new south wales and
australian terms and um with science pointing towards that becoming
the norm it indicates that there is
a very acute need to to ensure that some of these survival
strategies for koalas are undertaken by the community
i'd like to talk briefly about one of the areas that we're looking at as part of the the project
um again roman has provided a little bit of data on koala surveys
the triangles that you can see on the map that are popping up in in blue and orange are koala
sightings that are reported through those reporting platforms by the community
and one thing that becomes apparent when you're looking at this map is the incidence of koala sightings in
around the armadale region and it's not to be confused with the fact
that there are a lot of koalas in armada it indicates that more likely there are a
lot of people in ahmedabad to report those sightings and if you extrapolate or extend that
information you get a fair idea that there are probably viable populations that are
going unreported in areas that aren't close to urban areas so
again as rahman was was saying in her presentation
this data is critical to to feed up to the new south wales government to provide actions uh back to the community
and funding on how we can help uh the survival of the koalas without these sightings we would have
limited ideas through survey work on where koalas exist um and sightings are are a large part of
of um the the data set to indicate where the populations are
so a couple of ideas on what landholders or the the community in general might like
to to assist firstly restoring koala habitat on your
property is critical there are over 40 eucalypt species
in our local area in the southern new england that contribute as koala feed trees
and land care in the northern new south wales local land services are always
happy to provide opportunities to get land holders involved in recreating
whether they're corridors or block plantings areas of habitat that might be
conserved and contribute towards koala habitat or feed areas
the reason we we do that is to recreate the natural landscapes so we're looking
at a tree species that are endemic or absolutely native to the area and also
may provide wider biodiversity benefits to the property owner
we have hosted previous webinars that some people might be aware of that
give you the the tools or the nuts and bolts to be able to do that and both organizations the northern tablelands
local land service and landcare are happy to work with people to
provide the the resources and tools and knowledge on how you might go about
uh planting on your property if you need any ideas or you'd like to talk to us about that
and there's also guidelines under the new south wales koala revegetation plan
so what we do as part of the eoi or expression of interest process is
come out and visit your property when we receive an eri we look at opportunities for joint
enterprise planning if there's blocks of neighbours that really does have merit towards a project
in establishing wider connected corridors and we can provide knowledge packs
that give you part of the tools and the instruments to
undertake a wider scale effective planting
in general some ideas on getting involved have a look at both
our website at southern new england landcare and the northern tablelands local land services there is always
plenty of events and community engagement activities that will be able to provide
um knowledge and and resources for people that want to be involved
as roman said if you're aware of those key threatening processes your vehicle strikes
your backyard fencing the threat from livestock and the threat
from dogs we can help you work on strategies to reduce those threats
if you're in a position where you see a koala and you'd like to report it there's a number of platforms you can use
one is the ice by koala app that feeds up to the statewide bionet program
and there are others available through the australian living atlas that was mentioned previously
the armadale regional council has all been also been recording koala sightings
over the last five years and from last count i think they had
somewhere in the order of over 500 koalas reported for the yamada local
government area so that's a positive indication that we
are consistently having koalas either moving through the area or resident populations within the area
and most importantly if you see a koala and it looks like it's in distress either from humans dogs or vehicles
there are two agencies that have the resources to to help and the numbers are below that's
northern tablelands wildlife carriers and wires on the general number
the private land conservation there's always funding available to fence and plant koala habitat on your property so
if you if you want to be a part of that get in contact with some new england
landcare or the northern tablelands local land services and submit an expression of interest and
we're happy to work with you on that going forward and some of our local native tree
nurseries can also help with koala friendly friendly trees
it's it doesn't matter what scale you're interested in if you want to plant you have a small block and you'd like to
establish 20 or 40 uh habitat trees on your block it all counts if you're looking at larger
projects that might extend to one or two thousand trees if you contact these nurseries they they have stock available
at the moment and we can help you with one of those projects
i think it's also important to remember that some when we talk about koala habitat we're not limiting that habitat
to eucalypt species we're also talking about the understory or the shrubs as well that go
towards uh protecting our koalas and keep keeping them safe
and there's a number below if you'd like to contact us or contact the northern lake uh northern
tablelands local land services we'd love to hear from you
and i think that's it awesome nice work
thank you roman and des that was really awesome now we've got quite a few questions
um so we might not get to all of them but um should we not answer your question
we'll look at it afterwards and contact you directly um so first up i wanted to ask um
i want to say that's those are really good in terms of the planting of the trees i actually know someone who
planted trees not long ago and they're already the trees are still really young and they've already seen koalas on their
property so i think they're only four years ago so it's pretty exciting
um so first question i've got for rahman which is
um i've got narrated a question asking about uh the recruitment of young koalas this
actually could be both of for you um as well um uh can you please make some comments
about what is happening with the recruitment of young koalas in the northern tablelands how we see young koalas surviving into
adulthood well there's you'll probably have access
to more population monitoring data than i do
yeah look um that's again that's um it's an area that has
got very initial research into i guess um i'm very
taking that question to mean how viable those populations are um
i guess that the data is showing at the moment that the northern tablelands while it does have
a small population of koalas compared to coastal areas the population does appear to be stable
at the moment there is a question whether they are transient koalas that we're having a
look at or they are resident populations that stay in the area um part of our monitoring projects
as raman said we we look at presence and absence but we've got some scope to extend that
out into population densities and really have a look at whether we
have the same koalas breeding and bringing up young koalas
into the future so look overall i'm i can't answer that accurately
but it does appear to be a stable population at the moment um
i've got to temper that again by saying look it's probably only 10 or 20 years worth of data so we
as we're working on these conservation strategies we also need more data to really target what what's required
excellent awesome um and now we had some questions about weeds um
which you then covered um and also about cattle and and the
effect that they have on koalas and also seasonal conditions so they were all questions that came in that um
that were subsequently then covered but i did think that there could be a little bit more uh elaboration on the weeds in
terms of prickly pear roman and your experience with that yeah i was going to mention i think
really all weeds are not equal in terms of koala some of them you know we still haven't proven whether
they help by protecting colors they move to the ground like clentana i've seen you know tunnel across lantana that
potentially are not detrimental to koala but prickly pear and all those um
nasties that basically they collect and as they move on the ground and we had
reports from local wildlife preschool group that they were seeing quite a few of those animals and um obviously a
horrendous um situation for the koala itself so yeah i
think that that can really be um you know a nasty hidden threat that we
might not find many of those because you know that happens quietly and out of
sight excellent awesome we've just had a question come in uh
which is open to either of you is the case that young eucalypts is it the case that young eucalypts can be
poisonous to koalas
i don't think so have you have you ever got data on that debt
um look i think it's um it's a great question um as i think romania touched on um each
population of koalas has um a certain gut biome that is
practiced to the toxicity of certain species of eucalypts so they do prefer some trees and won't
feed on others in our local area we find some definite barriers between
stringy barks and box gum woodlands they're not the same species of eucalypts and koalas won't feed one
population one family of koalas will not transition between one
um vegetation group to the other i don't
know how toxic it might be other than like any species a koala is
pretty in turn with what it likes so if it if it identifies with um one preferred
species of eucalypt it's probably unlikely to feed on that other species
and and therefore may not have a toxic effect at the same time it may go hungry if it
hasn't got access to um stringy bug for example if it's tuned
into to string it back in the different toxins within those leaves
excellent thanks for that um we've got a few here which ones to
choose from um do koalas or can they move or migrate
during times of drought and if you could elaborate on that if they do move where do they move from
um and or do they concentrate in areas from um survey that have been done so
there's not a lot of data but there's there's a couple of uh survey that i'm i
was caught as an example one was looking at koala um during heatwave and the one
that survived were the one along creek line but they didn't necessarily move from outside it was more if they were
there they were in a better position to survive and another one was following translocation and they look at koala
behavior and especially as the habitat was degrading where the koala were moving away from
that degraded habitat or staying and they say in both case when they're translocated or when the habitat is
degrading it's um they see all sort of um behavior and they wonder whether it's
part of you know the genetic makeup of those personalities some people um
call it um that some animals are very um much uh inclined to stay where they are
without and without that um boldness to explore or the habitat
whereas others are less um you know attached um but yeah in term of big immigration um
yeah we we wouldn't see that but in terms of small adaptation whether they would be able to select the best habitat
i think um you know it depends on the koala that's if you want to add to that
on mute i think
possibly we can't hear you
we've lost you the sound was working so well
never trust the sound how's that oh yeah that's great that's perfect
sorry about that um yeah i think that was well answered uh ramon and again i
just um we'll go back to that point we do know that there are different barriers for
koala movement within the landscape whether the physical barriers uh in lack of uh habitat to move across
there's a very famous picture of a koala in the middle of the liverpool plains in a horrible drought back in 29 2009
during a heat wave that was identified up a telegraph pole
um so obviously you get those um barriers to koala movements um the other
one as we discussed might be preferred tree species so
there are berries in the landscape that koalas moving however they will try and move when they
run out of preferred feed trees or they they need to cool themselves because of
a heat wave or they need to find water they're quite some um mobile
um and we do have data that um track koalas in the local area that was done by stringy park ecology
and uh i think it pointed to somewhere in that the range of up to 40 kilometers for a male so
is that right roman right yeah yeah that's totally that's doable that's that's um in the higher
range but as i say koala moved very differently in different part of the landscape
excellent um i also have another question here and just while you're answering that i will go and quickly
turn off our alarm system which has currently gone off um how common is a white koala
not very common i still haven't splashed in picture but i haven't seen them yet have you seen
them there never a white one no i actually heard someone earlier today
tell me about the albino koala um and they are up in the north east um of
tenderfield which is where we're going to do our surveys and that's the perfect segue to
um ask roman and get her to talk about a little bit about why we're doing the surveys up
there yeah so we kind of i'm doing two things
this year and we're doing some um koala scat survey using the detection dog and
that's um to fill in some uh gaps in area that we haven't yet covered um
we've we've been working hard but it is a big area to cover so we still have um
you know spots and that that we would like to access and um we've been um you
know kind of uh surveying further and further from the easy track as well so and we'll go more into
national park and this year and the second thing that we're going to do is to identify places and this was
mentioning that too and to start gaining um density of koala so it's pretty those
two things combine the distribution of yokala where they do occur and then in area where they occur how many are they
so the density of color and that's that's giving you your baseline to be able to answer questions such as we have
before you know are they surviving and are they transitioning to adulthood and
and the way to do that is really to look at density um around the year and um and so we deploying the drone to
do that so that should be happening later this year
awesome excellent yes i remember uh dez mentioning that a lot of how um carlos are mapped is whether
they're logged as present or absence and and there's not many people up in that area so hoping to
find some koalas because without people they won't get logged
um now i actually karen who uh asked about the white koala
she said my neighbor in the liston area spotted a white koala a few months ago uh going into my property and she'll
keep looking for it so maybe it's the same one um
we'll have time for maybe one more question and then and then we'll
disperse and enjoy the rest of our evenings as well we'll continue enjoying um
let's see what we have um peter parnell how can we find out
more information on preferred trees in our area
sorry no no i was just saying go plane care
i could afford a list that i think was displayed tonight uh in part at least it
has for our area um highly significant preferred
and good enough to use a better term good enough habitat
so you can match the species of tree to whether koalas are likely to
favor those eucalypts in and around at least armada
excellent awesome and sorry there is one more question before i'll i'll do the sign off
uh have you guys ever seen birds having any impact on koalas aggressive birds
yeah i did actually um so i was um one of the quality and
helping in in terms of wildlife rescue and one of the koala um that i had to attend to was a young male and he had
been pushed out of tree and people were watching him by crows and he fell and and died um
yeah i've seen different species and sometimes yeah they're really whether they're worried about a koala
being in a tree with their nest or something but they can be really aggressive and actually push them out of
the tree yeah i've found the same it may not
extend to a general rule across species but often birds and koalas will come
into conflict whether that's just because failure to
recognize the other species or perceive a threat and again that goes for cattle as well
it's not that they um hate coilers per se but they don't understand what that equaler is doing on
the ground um and often they'll the instinct will kick in and they will uh attack a koala
or try and move it on um and if you can imagine you know 600 kilos versus 10 kilowatt kilos it's um
not not going to be a good outcome for the quark so in a species it's a funny area and and
uh it does seem like the does get the the raw end of the deal a lot of the time um
cockatoos for example do come into conflict with them so of crested cockatoos in our area so
yeah i can't explain why whether it's perceived or real
do you have any information on that yeah i know i'm the same as you um yeah
i think it's probably a perceived threat i don't think they see you know um puts any danger but um they
can definitely um yeah get the unfortunately the
the constant attack by birds and and for cattle i think um in other parts um of
the word um cattle had have been found to trample um animals that um carry
disease that they're affected by so potentially there is a little bit of a
you know selection pressure there but yeah um it's it's really not well studied that's for sure
yeah excellent awesome well i think that's a good place to wrap it up uh thank you
roman and des um if anyone who's watching wants to know more there's a survey that will pop up after this
webinar ends where you can log any extra questions um or interest for any events coming up
uh there'll also be an email coming out tomorrow which has my contact details so feel free to give me an email even if
you just want to have a chat on the phone excellent awesome i'm happy to include that preferred
species list too to to anybody who's interested so we might wrap that up in the um in the summary as well
yes excellent awesome i might i'll even um uh is it okay i'll add your email to
that so they can get into it yep awesome perfect thank you everyone
thanks everyone thanks for having us thank you see ya
and now to figure out how to turn it off
i wasn't sure whether we were catching up after but i suppose i'll we can catch up tomorrow
whatever sounds good all right
see ya bye you too bye
