Koala’s Post

Transcript

Koala. It's a pity hard to find in a forest and that dogs can go straight to the base of the tree, sit there and look up and there's a koala there. I think it's fantastic. It certainly makes it easier to go and find koalas across vast areas of forest. Detection dogs are a really important component of the Koala survey toolkit. They're bred to sniff out odour and detect things through smell. Through the use of the detection dogs, we've been able to cover 115 sites across the Bellingen, Coffs Harbour area. Over 80% of those sites we found koala activity on. We were also able to collect a large number of fresh **** samples which were able to send away for genetic analysis. My phone book koala. They basically look like cold weather. Koalas seemed to have a darker fur and they just look sort of big and fluffy, more so than the coastal interland collars. Finding a population like this that's free of the disease, it's like striking gold. Having good genetic diversity allows populations to be more robust, to stay healthier and more resilient and resistant to diseases like chlamydia. Chlamydia can kill koalas and stop them breeding. So when you have a low chlamydia levels, it means that koalas are under less stress, means there's more chance that they'll survive and breed and make more koalas. None of this work would be doable if we didn't have partners like canines for wildlife and amazing little dogs like Max that's been trained to sniff out the smallest piece of koala poo, whether it's fresh or a few days old. Koalas are only going to be saved through good partnerships, scientists, First Nations. Land owners, conservationists, national parks, even forestry corporation with koala support, we're connecting fragmented habitats across our landscapes to allow wildlife to move and to build landscape resilience. When we have dogs finding koala scats and land owners wanting to support their koalas, that really gives me hope that we will save koalas from extinction.