KOALA NEWS & SCIENCE
An informative monthly newsletter about successes & important announcements in koala conservation, and the latest scientific publications about koalas.
July 2024
Subscribe here: https://mailchi.mp/808fc4af1ee0/koala-news-science
Land clearing for livestock pasture primary cause of deaths of 100,000,000 native animals 30 July
Greenpeace and RSPCA Queensland have released a report showing the deadly toll of land clearing: estimated 100 million native animals killed, injured or displaced in NSW & Queensland every year. That includes an estimated 1200 koalas.
https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/8712223/land-clearing-taking-a-deadly-toll-on-wildlife-report/
Grant for SA wildlife rescue organisation, more needed 30 July
Southern Koala & Echidna Rescue (SKER) aim to raise $90,000 before 1 September to fund veterinary care. They responded to 940 incidents last year.
https://www.realestatebusiness.com.au/industry/28341-koala-care-gets-boost-with-network-grant
An end to koala holding at Lone Pine QLD sparks calls for a ban 6 July
Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary have opted to cease offering koala cuddles, amongst calls for a wider ban on the stressful practice from environment groups.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/06/australia-cuddling-koala-ban-why-explained
There’s a petition about this online , with 48,000+ signatures already. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/animals/petition-help-ban-koala-cuddling-in-australia/
What’s really eating our planted trees, and do we need to guard them? 1 August
There is a widespread idea that kangaroos and wallabies do substantial damage to revegetation. But how much damage is actually done by domestic stock and feral animals?
https://www.koalaclancyfoundation.org.au/are-kangaroos-and-wallabies-a-problem-for-tree-planting-in-australia/
Campbelltown Koala rally held 6 July
The rally in central Campbelltown was told that they only way to save south west Sydney’s koalas was protecting every single existing tree and regenerating habitat until the species recovers.
https://southwestvoice.com.au/rally-south-west-sydney-koalas/
Landowners sought in Clarence Valley, northern NSW 10 July
Clarence Valley Koala Working Group are seeking interest from local landowners to have free koala trees planted.
https://clarencevalleynews.com.au/plant-food-trees-for-our-iconic-koalas/
New koala hotspot found northern NSW 12 July
Bellingen Environment Centre have surveyed a new area in Gladstone State Forest where nearly every Grey Gum shows koala scratch marks.
https://www.newsofthearea.com.au/survey-identifies-koala-hotspot-in-gladstone-state-forest
Local business donates to koalas QLD 13 July
The donation from Big Heart Bamboo in Belli, near Noosa, was matched by the local Bendigo Bank, and received by Queensland Koala Crusaders.
https://noosatoday.com.au/news/13-07-2024/big-hearts-reach-out-for-koalas/
Shipping company partners with Koala Clancy Foundation to rebuild koala habitats 29 July
The global shipping giant launched an initiative with the planting of 3,400 koala trees in Victoria.
https://www.thedcn.com.au/region/australia/anl-launches-initiative-supporting-koala-habitats/
Koalas dispersing, motorists encouraged to be watchful Redlands QLD 29 July
Tips for the public to help young koalas disperse safely through southern Queensland.
https://www.redlandscoasttoday.com.au/2024/07/keep-an-eye-out-for-young-koalas-on-the-move-across-redlands-coast/
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Latest Koala Science
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Lott, M.J., Frankham, G.J., Eldridge, M.D., Alquezar‐Planas, D.E., Donnelly, L., Zenger, K.R., Leigh, K.A., Kjeldsen, S.R., Field, M.A., Lemon, J. and Lunney, D., 2024. Reversing the decline of threatened koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) populations in New South Wales: Using genomics to enhance conservation outcomes. Ecology and Evolution, 14(8), p.e11700. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.11700
Genetic management is a critical component of threatened species conservation. Understanding spatial patterns of genetic diversity is essential for evaluating the resilience of fragmented populations to accelerating anthropogenic threats. Nowhere is this more relevant than on the Australian continent, which is experiencing an ongoing loss of biodiversity that exceeds any other developed nation. Using a proprietary genome complexity reduction-based method (DArTSeq), we generated a data set of 3239 high quality Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) to investigate spatial patterns and indices of genetic diversity in the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), a highly specialised folivorous marsupial that is experiencing rapid and widespread population declines across much of its former range. Our findings demonstrate that current management divisions across the state of New South Wales (NSW) do not fully represent the distribution of genetic diversity among extant koala populations, and that care must be taken to ensure that translocation paradigms based on these frameworks do not inadvertently restrict gene flow between populations and regions that were historically interconnected. We also recommend that koala populations should be prioritised for conservation action based on the scale and severity of the threatening processes that they are currently faced with, rather than placing too much emphasis on their perceived value (e.g., as reservoirs of potentially adaptive alleles), as our data indicate that existing genetic variation in koalas is primarily partitioned among individual animals. As such, the extirpation of koalas from any part of their range represents a potentially critical reduction of genetic diversity for this iconic Australian species.
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Beranek, C.T., Southwell, D., Jessop, T.S., Hope, B., Gama, V.F., Gallahar, N., Webb, E., Law, B., McIlwee, A., Wood, J. and Roff, A., 2024. Comparing the cost‐effectiveness of drones, camera trapping and passive acoustic recorders in detecting changes in koala occupancy. Ecology and Evolution, 14(7), p.e11659. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.11659
Quantifying the cost-effectiveness of alternative sampling methods is crucial for efficient biodiversity monitoring and detection of population trends. In this study, we compared the cost-effectiveness of three novel sampling methods for detecting changes in koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) occupancy: thermal drones, passive acoustic recorders and camera trapping. Specifically, we fitted single-season occupancy-detection models to data recorded from 46 sites in eight bioregions of New South Wales, Australia, between 2018 and 2022. We explored the effect of weather variables on daily detection probability for each method and, using these estimates, calculated the statistical power to detect 30%, 50% and 80% declines in koala occupancy. We calculated power for different combinations of sites (1–200) and repeat surveys (2–40) and developed a cost model that found the cheapest survey design that achieved 80% power to detect change. On average, detectability of koalas was highest with one 24-h period of acoustic surveys (0.32, 95% CI’s: 0.26, 0.39) compared to a 25-ha flight of drone surveys (0.28, 95% 0.15, 0.48) or a 24-h period of camera trapping consisting of six cameras (0.019, 95% CI’s: 0.014, 0.025). We found a negative quadratic relationship between detection probability and air temperature for all three methods. Our power and cost analysis suggested that 148 sites surveyed with acoustic recorders deployed for 14 days would be the cheapest method to sufficiently detect a 30% decline in occupancy with 80% power. We recommend passive acoustic recorders as the most efficient sampling method for monitoring koala occupancy compared to cameras or drones. Further comparative studies are needed to compare the relative effectiveness of these methods and others when the monitoring objective is to detect change in koala abundance over time.
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Tarlinton, R. and Greenwood, A.D., 2024. Koala retrovirus and neoplasia: correlation and underlying mechanisms. Current Opinion in Virology, 67, p.101427. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coviro.2024.101427
The koala retrovirus, KoRV, is one of the few models for understanding the health consequences of retroviral colonization of the germline. Such colonization events transition exogenous infectious retroviruses to Mendelian traits or endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). KoRV is currently in a transitional state from exogenous retrovirus to ERV, which in koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) has been associated with strongly elevated levels of neoplasia. In this review, we describe what is currently known about the associations and underlying mechanisms of KoRV-induced neoplasia.
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Kunesh, C., 2024. The Disease Down Under: Therapeutic Vaccination Against Chlamydia in Koalas, Immune Responses & Microbiome Differences. http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp012227mt019
Koalas, now officially on the endangered species list, are faced with a wide array of threats to their survival, one of the most prominent being Chlamydia pecorum. The risks of current antibiotic treatment have prompted the creation of a vaccine using the Major Outer Membrane Protein (MOMP) of C. pecorum. Limited studies have shown possible therapeutic effects of the vaccine. First, this thesis serves as a deeper investigation into the therapeutic vaccine, assessing the humoral immune responses of unvaccinated and therapeutically vaccinated koalas. We found a trend where therapeutic vaccination is correlated with an antibody titer boost that is greater than the one caused by natural infection alone. This suggests extra protection conferred by the therapeutic vaccine. Additionally, we found sex to be a significant predictor of antibody titers with males displaying a stronger antibody response than females, a result that has not been reported before in koalas. Secondly, this thesis examined the ocular and urogenital microbiomes of the koala, specifically in relation to infection and vaccination status. We found that the alpha diversities of both microbiomes were higher when infected with C. pecorum. We also show that while diversity of these microbiomes is significantly associated with infection status, they are not associated with therapeutic vaccination status. This suggests that the microbial compositional shifts seen in infected koalas is not directly mediated by an immune response to MOMP. Future research is needed to explore other aspects of vaccine efficacy like antibody neutralization and longevity of protection. Furthermore, an expanded reference sequence database for koalas is needed to make more confident claims about the relationship between infection, therapeutic vaccination, and the koala microbiome.
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Johnston, S.D., Hulse, L., Keeley, T., Mucci, A., Seddon, J. and Maynard, S., 2024. The Utility of the Koala Scat: A Scoping Review. Biology, 13(7), p.523. https://doi.org/10.3390/biology13070523
The use of samples or scats to provide important ecological, genetic, disease and physiology details on free-range populations is gaining popularity as an alternative non-invasive methodology. Koala populations in SE Queensland and NSW have recently been listed as endangered and continue to face anthropomorphic and stochastic environmental impacts that could potentially lead to their extinction. This scoping review examines the current and potential utility of the koala scat to contribute data relevant to the assessment of koala conservation status and decision making. Although we demonstrate that there is great potential for this methodology in providing details for both individual wild animal and population biology (distribution, abundance, sex ratio, immigration/emigration, genetic diversity, evolutionary significant unit, disease epidemiology, nutrition, reproductive status and stress physiology), the calibre of this information is likely to be a function of the quality of the scat that is sampled.
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Koala Science In Brief
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Fässler, N., Biggel, M., Jelocnik, M., Borel, N. and Marti, H., 2024. Development of shuttle vector-based transformation systems for Chlamydia pecorum and Chlamydia caviae. bioRxiv, pp.2024-07. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.11.603181
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Andres, S.E., Medina, C., Gallagher, R.V., Hillman, G., Palmes, L., Lieurance, P.E. and Mills, C.H., 2024. Not enough trees–Scaling up koala habitat restoration using seed enhancement technologies. Conservation Science and Practice, p.e13180. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.13180
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Feature Paper
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Freudenberger, D., 2018. Matching effort to threat: Strategies to increase the scale and effectiveness of revegetation in southern Australia. Ecological Management & Restoration, 19, pp.6-10. https://doi.org/10.1111/emr.12322
The past 30 years of restoration activities in Australia has been mere cautious fiddling in the face of continental-wide native habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation. A fundamental principle of conservation is to address threats at the scale of the threatening processes. This is still not happening for two reasons: we do not know how to effectively restore at scale, and if we did, there is no demand because it does not pay. The first problem of developing the technologies needed for large-scale revegetation will largely be solved if we collectively demand revegetation at scale. Such a scale of demand by Australian governments (taxpayers) is only likely if a permanent Natural Heritage Trust is created for long-term funding complemented by a price on carbon pollution. That will take a lot of political will. The other big opportunity is to create demand for large-scale revegetation cofunded by farmers to improve their farm’s long-term productivity, resilience and economic viability. This requires sustained R&D supported by novel partnerships with the massive Australian agricultural market. Native vegetation must move from the margins to the mainstream if scale is to be achieved.
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Previous Koala News & Science here: https://www.wildkoaladay.com.au/koala-news-science/koala-news-science-june-2024/
Written by Janine Duffy President, Koala Clancy Foundation.
with support from Cheryl Egan, Organiser, Wild Koala Day.
Please send your positive, important news & publications to president@koalaclancyfoundation.org.au before 29th of each month for possible inclusion.