The video might be a bit on the cheesy side but the plight of the koalas is real and having just had my personal koala moment, I cannot stop thinking about what is happening to them. There are half as many koalas now as there were 6 years ago, they are loosing their habitat and their food trees (eucalyptus leaves), their population is being ravaged by chlamydia which can cause blindness, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, and reproductive tract infections which can cause female infertility, it is Koala AIDS. 50 – 80% of the marsupials are infected with chlamydia, they are dying in bush fires, run over by cars and killed by dogs. WIth all this happening to them there is increased stress on the koalas which makes them more susceptible to disease. When their habitat is cleared for roads and housing estates cars and dogs become a serious threat to the koalas. Over 4,000 koalas are killed each year by cars and dogs. There are fewer than 80,000, and potentially as few as 43,000 koalas left in Australia today. Researchers are working on a vaccine, it may arrive too late. The vaccine could harm the animal's specialized digestive tract, which contains healthy bacteria that break down their diet rich in eucalyptus leaves. The koalas are estimated to have a $1 billion impact on the tourism industry so the plight of the Koala and chlamydia is not very well known outside of Australia. The average life-span of an adult male koala is ten years but the average survival rate for a dispersing sub-adult male living near a highway or a housing estate is closer to two or three years. Since European settlement, approximately 80% of Australia's eucalypt forests have been decimated. Of the remaining 20% almost none is protected and most occurs on privately-owned land.
https://www.savethekoala.com/donatebutton.html
Later,
Diane
https://www.savethekoala.com/akfprofile.html
