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About Author: Bill Ellis

Posts by Bill Ellis

3

Koalas and People

By
Bill Ellis
– June 28, 2011Posted in: Animal Stories, Animals and Plants, Conservation, Projects in the Field, Uncategorized

Can you imagine finding Sarge in YOUR backyard?!

It seems like only yesterday I was in San Diego catching up with all the people at the the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, but today I am in a very different and unique environment: North Stradbroke Island. I have written before about our work on this amazing island near Brisbane in Australia, but the most recent trip was a real eye-opener. Most of my work is centered on the remote island of St. Bees, where we don’t see any other people, and the koalas go about their business almost as if we don’t exist. On North Stradbroke Island, it seems that the locals—both koala and human—have worked out how to share their environment, at least in the small township of Amity Point.

Earlier this year we fitted four koalas at Amity Point with radio and GPS collars so we could track them and record their positions throughout the nights. Now we are recovering the collars and plotting the data, revealing a very interesting story. Far from only using the patches of trees that remain around and within the township, the koalas at Amity seem to make themselves right at home even within people’s backyards. I have included a photo of Sarge, one of the males we had collared. We found him sitting in the front yard of a house in Amity, apparently not disturbed by the occasional passing tourist. You can see the fence in the background, which leads to our next koala.

Library (so named because we first caught her in front of the local library grounds) was living right on the seaside, in the backyard of some locals who had made her transport easier by building bridges over the fences between their properties. By leaning old tree trunks up against the fences, they had created a passage for koalas to travel along, safely negotiating the urban landscape. When we caught her, we not only had several generations of residents watching us—we also found her to have a joey in her pouch.

Despite the houses, occasional shops, and frequent tourists, the koalas in Amity seem to highlight how people and koalas can share the environment. The locals are very interested in what any researchers are up to (and want to make sure we have a good reason to be catching the koalas!) and are keen to do what they can to encourage koalas to move safely through their properties. Sometimes this can be quite exciting, as one resident told us of an occasion when a koala landed on her roof, only to climb back into the tree (probably embarrassed for being clumsy), but in general the humans and koalas are co-existing in harmony.

We recovered a lot of detailed data recording where each of our koalas went, and it is clear that the residents’ yards and street trees are very important to these animals and that people who make sure the koalas can move through their properties are doing a great job in securing the future of this population. All the koalas were healthy, and each female had a joey in her pouch, which is a welcome change from some other locations in Southeast Queensland.

We will be continuing our work on North Stradbroke Island for several years to come; I am hoping we have found another haven, like St. Bees Island, where their future is a little brighter than many other places.

Bill Ellis is a Clark Endowed Postdoctoral Research Fellow for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. Read his previous post, Urban Koalas.

 

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1

Urban Koalas

By
Bill Ellis
– April 5, 2011Posted in: Animal Stories, Animals and Plants, Conservation, Projects in the Field, Uncategorized

I have spent the last month or so in western Queensland and in the Northern Territory, so it is nice to be back in southeast Queensland working with the urban koalas again. With my colleagues from The University of Queensland, we have extended our project that began on St. Bees Island and are using the same tracking techniques down among the urban sprawl of Brisbane. It is a very different style of work here; we have electricity and motor vehicles and assistance is never far away, but there is another interesting and unusual thing about working here—the locals. Not the local koalas, the local people.

Everywhere we go we invariably meet someone who has knowledge of the local koalas. Some people have seen their suburbs change from semi-rural landscapes to high-density dwellings, and often these folks recall the days when koalas roamed freely across their lawns and climbed their trees. Too often, the tales are sad ones of the lack of recent sightings, and generally people are happy to see that we are taking an interest and doing our research.

In Redlands, south of Brisbane, the local council is supporting our radio tracking project through which we hope to determine the extent of use of backyard trees and street trees by koalas, as well as finding out what attributes of local parks and bush patches are most attractive to koalas. The council hopes to be able to protect the best patches and augment the lesser-used ones, while protecting linkages and stopping the loss of any trees koalas use.

Of course, when we are catching koalas in the urban areas, the interested local folks are not far away and often come and inquire as to what we are doing with “their” koalas. Far from being a distraction, this is a wonderful vote of support for what we are doing, and it’s a pleasure to tell them that we, too, value “their” koalas and are helping protect their habitat. As you can see in the photo, we quite often draw a bit of a crowd, so the pressure is on to make sure we handle the koalas very carefully and explain what we are doing as we go along.

The photo shows Sean up the tree as we catch a koala we called “George” – because that is what the local people told us his name was! We also caught a female – Mary (also named by the locals in honor of the street she is most often found along) in the tree next to her and both of these koalas were fitted with GPS collars similar to those we use at St. Bees Island. If you look closely, you can also see the small tree guards around the newly planted koala food trees in the ground at this site. All over Brisbane tree planting projects are under way to redress the loss of koala trees, even along local streets like this one.

The people who live with koalas are an interesting bunch: they talk with great enthusiasm about the noise during the breeding season (from the koalas bellowing – something I am also interested in) and about which koalas they have recently seen. Recent studies suggest that koalas in the southeast are in grave danger, but with these people on their side and with the data we are producing in the hands of the council, I hope the koalas are here for generations to come.

Bill Ellis is a Clark Endowed Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research.

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9

Quolls: Critically Endangered and Remote

By
Bill Ellis
– November 24, 2010Posted in: Conservation at the Zoo, Projects in the Field

Bill holds a northern quoll.

I spend almost all of my time working in Australia on the San Diego Zoo’s koala project (see previous post, Koala Fieldwork: Helping Hands), but I have recently been introduced to other unique Australians. This week I traveled to east Arnhem Land in northern Australia to the home of the Wanindilyakwa people: Groote Eylandt. This large island (about 30 miles or 48 kilometers across and 50 miles or 80 kilometers long) lies in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and it is some of the most remote country in Australia. The island is home to the unique local indigenous people as well as one of the only intact natural populations of the critically endangered northern quoll Dasyurus hallicatus.

The people of this land are unique: they have lived here for centuries, they have their own unique language, and they have an amazing cultural history that links them to all the animals and plants of their environment. I traveled with my colleagues from the Queensland University of Technology and the University of Queensland to work on a project designed to protect the local environment from the threat of the cane toad, which (luckily) has not reached Groote Eylandt, and to study the amazing northern quoll. We flew to Darwin in the Northern Territory, then climbed into a smaller plane that took us across via Nhulunbuyand over the Arafura Sea to Groote Eylandt, where we met the team from the Anindilyakwa Land Council.

Another quoll species is the tiger, or spotted-tail quoll.

The northern quoll is a ferocious predator that weighs about 2 pounds (0.9 kilograms) but which certainly punches above its weight. It’s the smallest of four quoll species in Australia, and although it was once widely distributed across the north of Australia, now only patchy populations remain as the toxic cane toad, which represents a likely meal to most quolls, has invaded its territory. The toxin of the toad is fatal to quolls, and grave fears are held for the stability of the top end’s ecosystems as quoll populations are decimated by the toad’s advance.

Fortunately, Groote Eylandt is currently toad free: something the local people are very keen to perpetuate. However, recently more boat and air traffic between the mainland and Groote Eylandt has meant more opportunities for toads to “hitch a ride,” and concerns for the pristine nature of Groote Eylandt are high.

Our group has established some sensors—the same units we use at St. Bees Island to monitor the bellows of our koalas—to keep an ear out for the toads. We hope these units will provide an early warning system near the water bodies of the island so that if toads do arrive, areas can be quarantined and action taken to, it is hoped, eradicate them before they become established.

In parallel, we are monitoring the ecology and population dynamics of the quolls. Like St. Bees, where we have a pristine environment in which to work, Groote Eylandt is unique because it hosts this natural and isolated population of quolls, so our work here is not impacted by many of the forces that might affect other quoll populations, especially the impact of toads.

There are other parallels between the studies: other than the remote and beautiful nature of the locations, we are using vhf tracking to locate the quolls and investigate their spatial dynamics and breeding behavior. Like St. Bees for koalas, Groote Eylandt is a sanctuary for quolls, so the people of Groote Eylandt see quolls regularly. They know their ferocious hunting habits and their penchant for using houses and sheds as dens during the day. Some people even report that if they do not put food away, quolls will come into their houses and steal it!

It is exciting to be a part of a program aimed at preserving such an interesting and critically endangered species, and it is good to be assisting with a species that does not have quite the public profile that the koala has and learning from the local people at the same time. All these animals have a role to play in our environment, and it is up to us to make sure they are here for the future. Who knows what key role they may play in the ecosystem on which we depend?

Bill Ellis is the Clarke Endowed Postdoctoral Researcher for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation.

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2

Koala Fieldwork: Helping Hands

By
Bill Ellis
– November 16, 2010Posted in: Animal Stories, Conservation at the Zoo, Projects in the Field

Bill is studying wild koalas on St. Bees island off the coast of Australia. Read his previous post, Koalas Get High-tech Support.

It is not always easy for me to convince people that what we are doing is hard work. Our island site is warm and pleasant at this time of year, surrounded by beautiful ocean and inhabited by wonderful koalas. Fortunately, I am having many visitors to my study site, which means I have many more hands on deck, which means we can do even more!

Last month it was Geoff Pye, D.V.M., and Brian Opitz from the San Diego Zoo who helped with catching, collaring, and (most importantly) taking X rays of all the koalas. This month I had Jen and Jen from the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research on board, and we worked just as hard. Jen Tobey is a specialist studying the sounds koalas make (see her post Koala Field Project: Meet Jackaroo); Jen Roesler is a keeper at the Zoo who is also an expert in handling koalas, so I expected big things from this pair.

Professor Paul Roe from Queensland University of Technology, who has designed and built the sensor network that eavesdrops on our koalas, and Ben Charlton, an expert in animal communication who has recently turned his skilled hands to koalas, joined us on St. Bees. Rounding out the team was Dr. Sean FitzGibbon, an expert in koala ecology, capture, and handling, with whom I spend a lot of my time in the field.

Our target for this trip was to record the bellows of as many male koalas as we could find so that we could compare the features of each male’s bellows to his size, age, and behavior. We had three microphones and spent every night sitting under the trees of the koalas or running through the bush following their bellows. By day, we tracked the animals, checked on their position so that we knew where to go at night, and caught any new animals that we hadn’t found. We removed the GPS collars that we had deployed in September and also removed some standard vhf collars from animals that we are not going to follow this summer. We were pushed for time, so we even went catching at night, which made for extra-long days.

Luckily, we found several of the females we had caught in September that now had joeys on their backs (many of these were still in the pouch on our last trip). Little Pickle is now a fully fledged mother, and she resides up near Elizabeth, the oldest mother we are tracking. Both of these koalas are raising healthy and good-looking babies this year: Pickle’s baby is named Onion (not my choice of name), and Elizabeth is raising baby number nine, Ginger. We also found some new males; we managed to record the bellows from two of them (Eddie and Jeremy).

It was an exciting and tiring trip, with everyone’s sleep routine totally wrecked by the end. We recorded more koalas that I thought we would, we recovered all the collars we needed to (including Leaper’s, who had crossed the island!) and we even saw two males fighting one afternoon.

We are now starting to put the pieces of the koala–bellowing jigsaw puzzle together. We know that not all the males bellow all the time, but we are not 100-percent sure what makes them decide when it is their turn. We also found bellowing to be concentrated in parts of the island and absent elsewhere, making us wonder whether the males really call to attract the females or whether the females attract the males, who then bellow.

I am sure that as we plan our next trip, we are a step closer to understanding this interesting behavior in koalas; but in the meantime, I am catching up on sleep. Luckily for me, unlike my visitors from the Zoo and the Institute for Conservation Research, I didn’t have an 18-hour plane flight back to San Diego to look forward to when I returned from the island. There are some advantages to living close to your study animals!

Bill Ellis is the Clarke Endowed Postdoctoral Researcher for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation.

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5

Koalas Get High-tech Support

By
Bill Ellis
– September 13, 2010Posted in: Animal Stories, Conservation at the Zoo, Projects in the Field

Geoff and Brian examine a koala held by Dr. FitzGibbon from the University of Queensland.

Hi, again, this time from St. Bees Island, off the eastern coast of Australia, where the weather is fantastic and the koalas are in great health! (Read post Koalas and Cyclone Ului). For the last week, the San Diego Zoo’s Geoff Pye, veterinarian, and Brian Opitz, veterinary technician, traveled across the globe to join me on humble St. Bees Island, bringing some expensive equipment and extensive knowledge with them.

Brian and Geoff are undertaking a comparison of health between the San Diego Zoo’s koalas and those we are studying on St. Bees Island. As trained veterinarians, they have a lot to offer the program and were able to inspect all the koalas we caught and assess their health. In addition, they are taking back some valuable samples that we hope will help identify how differences in environmental factors might affect the health of koalas in the wild as well as in managed care.

In addition to the koalas we already have in the program, which we identify by their small numbered ear tags, we found plenty of new koalas that had moved onto the knoll (our main site) over the last few months. We caught 20 koalas for this particular project during the week (14 adult females, 1 juvenile male, and 5 adult males), and only 8 were koalas that we had caught in the past. Of the 14 females, 8 still had young joeys with them, but we are nearing the peak of the breeding season and expect that these large joeys will soon leave and their mothers will be raising a new group of pouch young in the next few months.

All the koalas on St. Bees Island were in good condition, even some of the very old females that are still rearing young. We found Natasha, a koala that has been in the project for as long as Elizabeth (since 1999), and Dr. Pye commented on how well these koalas look, even though they don’t get things quite as good as do the koalas back in San Diego.

Each koala we examined was put under anesthesia, making it very easy to safely conduct health exams and collect samples painlessly and without distress to the animal. These procedures are very short but certainly allow us to collect a lot of important data that we hope to use both to understand what factors help make the koalas at St. Bees so healthy and to enhance captive management of these fascinating animals.

I will miss the input from the San Diego Zoo team when they return home next week, but it is only a few weeks until I will be seeing more friendly faces from the Zoo down here at our great study site.

Bill Ellis is the Clark Endowed Postdoctoral Researcher for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. Read his previous post, Urban Koala Update.

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Urban Koala Update

By
Bill Ellis
– August 27, 2010Posted in: Animal Stories, Conservation at the Zoo, Projects in the Field

A wild koala with dirty-tail disease.

Hi again from Brisbane, Australia, where for the last few weeks we have been gathering in our GPS collars and releasing the koalas back into their trees (see post Urban Koalas). It has been a hectic period, because I need to have all this work finished before I head back to St. Bees Island next month, so I am happy to reveal some good news from our recent work: almost all of the koalas we tracked this winter in the urban environment had babies, and when we released them, all these joeys seemed to be doing well.

One thing that we see more in the Brisbane area than anywhere else is signs of disease, mostly “dirty tail” and conjunctivitis caused by chlamydial infections. This disease is part of the problem Southeast Queensland’s koalas must overcome if they are to survive as a viable population in the future. Chlamydial infections cause infertility and can blind koalas. In severe cases, koalas die as they become weaker and weaker with respiratory and other infections.

We have begun testing all the koalas we come across in the Brisbane area to compare with koalas at St Bees Island. We know that the St. Bees koalas are very healthy, even though chlamydia occurs on the island, so now we want to see if there is a difference in the strains of disease between the locations, or if the koalas on St. Bees are somehow better able to defend themselves against this disease. I hope our results will shed some light on how we should tackle this problem in the future.

Koalas at the San Diego Zoo look much like koalas at St. Bees Island; they are healthy, fluffy, and don’t seem to have too many worries in their world. In other places, koalas have to deal with cars, dogs, and, in some cases, their trees disappearing as new housing estates are built. So, it is not that surprising that we find more disease where koalas are under more types of pressure than where they are not. I have included a photo of one of the young females we found, and you can see that she has dirty tail. While this can be fatal to many koalas, it is not always the case, so I am hoping this koala will recover. I am happy to say that we did not find many koalas with signs of disease, and most animals were in very good condition.

In the meantime, I will be back on St. Bees, counting myself fortunate to be working on such a healthy population. Breeding season is well under way, and I am going to be joined by some researchers from the San Diego Zoo. I hope that together we can find some answers to the plight of the koalas in the southeast.

Bill Ellis is the Clark Endowed Postdoctoral Researcher for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. Read his previous post, Koalas and Cyclone Ului.

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1

Koalas and Cyclone Ului

By
Bill Ellis
– July 28, 2010Posted in: Animal Stories, Conservation at the Zoo, Projects in the Field

Wow! I have now finished my surveys of koalas on all the islands and mainland near Mackay in the state of Queensland, Australia, and can report that the damage done by Cyclone Ului back in March 2010 was quite impressive. The week on Rabbit Island and the adjacent mainland last month was a real eye-opener for me. I have been studying koalas in the relatively benign environment of St. Bees Island for over 10 years and the nearby islands for 4 years. In that time I have not seen any cyclones hit the islands this hard, so I had no idea of the kind of damage these storms are capable of.

Cyclone Ului hit Rabbit Island very hard, and many of the koala-food trees were denuded of the leaves koalas rely on. As we searched that island, we were continually stepping over fallen trees, often large eucalypts that would have been a comfortable resting spot for a koala before the storm.

The picture was the same on the mainland, with large blue gums having been reduced to high stumps, their tops torn off by the storm. St. Bees Island was hit in a strange way: in some areas there was little damage, but in other places whole trees were uprooted or simply snapped off. One would imagine it must have been a frightening time for the koalas, with tree branches flung around, and no doubt some of the koalas probably perished in the storm. What I found most interesting was that while the blue gums (the favorite food of koalas on St. Bees) were often broken by the storm, these trees retained many leaves. In comparison, the ironbarks (also eaten but less preferred) tended not to lose branches but did lose all their leaves.

Unfortunately, fallen trees or large branches now mostly cover my usual tracks around St. Bees Island, so when the other researchers from the San Diego Zoo come out in September and October, we will be taking different routes. There is so much fallen timber on the ground that my concern now is that if a fire was to strike the island, there is so much fuel that it would be very hot and dangerous for koalas.

The good news is that I found five new koalas in our main study site (“the knoll”) on St. Bees Island, all very healthy and enjoying the cool breezes that we get at this time of year. I also found Elizabeth, one of the grand old ladies of our research; she has been on the knoll since 2000, so she is getting quite old but is still in good health and bringing up a young koala each year (see Urban Koalas). We also renovated all the listening stations, and we deployed three new stations to record koala bellowing on St. Bees Island when the breeding season gets underway. In October some of the team from San Diego will be here researching the koalas’ bellows, so I have been busy getting the recording boxes deployed and mounting new solar panels in anticipation.

Fortunately, none of our radio-collared koalas died in the cyclone, which makes me think that maybe these animals are better at surviving the wilds of the weather than we might think. I would love to know what they do when the wind gets so strong that it snaps branches and whole trees. There is still much to learn about koalas.

Bill Ellis is the Clarke Endowed Postdoctoral Fellow with the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. Read his previous post, Covering the Land, Koala-wise.

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Covering the Land, Koala-wise

By
Bill Ellis
– May 26, 2010Posted in: Conservation at the Zoo, Projects in the Field

Volunteer Gabriella with one of the koalas in the study.

The weather has turned cool, but the strong winds that accompanied cyclone Ului are long gone, and once again we are in coastal Queensland, Australia, looking for koalas (see previous post, Koalas: Not All Doom and Gloom). We have spent the last week in the west, catching koalas at Clermont, but now we have the sea to look at instead of the open plains. Our project at St. Bees has uncovered many interesting facets of koalas’ lives, but sometimes the most interesting things come to you by chance, and this trip is the result of one such chance.

The koalas of St. Bees Island were introduced way back in the 1920s and 1930s and occur in a relatively stable population of between 200 and 300 individuals there. We have been investigating their genetics to understand how their breeding system works. We want to know which males do most of the breeding, why some males might miss out, and what sort of strategies different koalas adopt to keep them in the race to reproduce. Along the way, we have had the opportunity to visit other islands near Mackay that are also inhabited by koalas, and we have collected genetic material from these koalas.

Local anecdotes tell us that the koalas on Brampton, Rabbit, and Newry islands are the decedents of the koalas on St. Bees Island, moved by various people over time, but our genetic data, collected by chance, tell a different story. On this trip, I am looking at the koalas on Rabbit Island (close to the coast) and also looking around the local mainland area to try to find koalas. These mainland koalas may be the key to this story, because if they are closely related to the Rabbit Island koalas, then this will suggest that the koalas on Rabbit Island are another natural island population, making them very important to the conservation managers in Queensland. It may be that koalas have made their own way to Rabbit Island, either by swimming the channel to the island or maybe using a previous land bridge many, many years ago.

We are based in Seaforth for this trip, a lovely seaside town north of Mackay and close to the islands. I have a great team of volunteers and colleagues scouring the bush by day, and we are again being helped by the Queensland National Parks rangers, who are taking us by boat to the island when we are not looking on the mainland.

We have caught six koalas on Rabbit and Newry islands so far, but found none on the adjacent mainland yet this trip. I really hope we can find enough koalas left on the mainland to resolve the issue of where the koalas on Rabbit Island came from. To do so will give the National Parks a powerful tool to ask for more resources to manage the islands against pests and fire.

For us, it will be rewarding to provide some positive input to the management of koalas. For the koalas of Rabbit and Newry islands, it could well determine their future, as well as their past.

Bill Ellis is a Clarke Endowed Postdoctoral Fellow for the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research.

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Koalas: Not all Gloom and Doom

By
Bill Ellis
– March 3, 2010Posted in: Animal Stories, Conservation at the Zoo, Projects in the Field

The plight of the koala in Queensland, Australia, is a major news focus right now. With a declining koala population in the wild, the Australian government is currently engaged in a political discussion regarding the protection of some of this habitat. In the meantime, habitat continues to be lost and koala numbers continue to decline. This makes for difficult times for koala researchers: we are caught in the middle, trying to collect enough information to inform and support moves that will protect koala habitat, but trying not to get caught up in the political friction or lose sight of our research aims along the way. So it is great to get some good news.

I am in the middle of another of my many field trips, on the way to St. Bees Island via Clermont in central Queensland, where I am assisting my colleague, Dr. Sean FitzGibbon, at his research sites.

Sean is also using GPS tracking collars on koalas (as we do at St. Bees), but he is investigating whether koalas will use rehabilitated land. His research takes us onto disturbed land that has been mined for coal in central Queensland and where the land has been replanted with koala food trees to recreate koala habitat.

In the past, we have found that some male koalas have made forays into the rehabilitated areas, probably looking for new food areas or maybe searching for mates. When we download the GPS data from the collars, we can tell where the koalas have been and for how long they have used areas in their range. On this trip we have found something extraordinary: a female we caught and collared last year well away from the rehabilitated sites has moved into the new habitat and spent the summer producing a joey whilst living on rehabilitated land!

In the photo you can see this koala, named Hillary, and the coal mine’s environment officer, Clare Foley, who is in charge of developing the reconstructed areas of the mine once the coal has been removed. The rehabilitation where Hillary lives was replanted in 1996, and you can see that many of the trees are still quite small, and there is plenty of long grass as a result of recent rain. While walking through this land we found many other animals—particularly frogs, kangaroos and lizards—that have re-colonized the once-cleared areas.

This tells us that not only is the recreation of koala habitat possible, but that by doing this we will recreate habitat for a range of other species. Finding koalas living in revegetated land means that in other places, like Southeast Queensland, we could be planting more trees and turning cleared land back to what it once was: habitat for many native species. It can be done, so in the long term we can increase, not decrease, the land available and suitable for koalas.

We are off to St. Bees Island now, a special place if for no other reason than that it is protected from any development, so the koalas can exist without the fear of habitat loss. It has its own management problems, but they are a far cry from trying to recreate homes for koalas amongst cleared bush in central Queensland.

Bill Ellis is a Clark-endowed Conservation Research Postdoctoral Fellow for the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research. Read his previous post, Urban Koalas.

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Urban Koalas

By
Bill Ellis
– February 17, 2010Posted in: Conservation at the Zoo, Projects in the Field

The San Diego Zoo is supporting one of the longest-running ecological studies of koalas, at St. Bees Island in central Queensland, Australia. So, most of my reports concentrate on the behavior of this healthy and undisturbed population: how the young koalas are doing, which males are on “the knoll” and whether Elizabeth has had another baby, etc. However, not all koala populations are doing as well as ours, and I also spend a good deal of time in Central Queensland and in Southeast Queensland, assisting other researchers in their work. In Southeast Queensland, the situation is very different from St. Bees Island (see previous post Island Koalas: Meet Orbit).

The koalas around Brisbane, some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) south of St. Bees Island, are in serious decline. Recent predictions based on detailed field surveys indicate that as few as 2,000 koalas remain from a formerly large and healthy population in the southeast. These koalas occur in fragments of bush that persist among new housing developments and in small patches of bushland that have been left to try to preserve habitat for them and other animals. Many koalas turn up in suburban back yards, and sadly, a lot of the koalas end up being injured (or worse) as a result of encounters with cars and dogs.

Despite koalas spending most of their time sitting in trees, they climb down to move between trees at night, and this is when they are in the most danger. I have been helping some researchers from the University of Queensland who are investigating how koalas use their small patches of habitat and whether there are any ways we can make their daily travels more safe. In some locations, large road underpasses have been built to allow koalas to move safely from one side of the road to the other, and the researchers I’m helping are tracking koalas to see whether they use the crossings and what features should be included in the crossing structures to help the koalas.

An ill koala.

Last week we caught several koalas to collect their GPS collar data, and one of the koalas we caught had a bad case of conjunctivitis, caused by chlamydial infection. Koalas at St. Bees Island, while appearing healthy, also have chlamydial infection, but we rarely see sick animals, and our conclusion is that the stress of living in the city might be a reason why more koalas in the southeast seem to show signs of infection than elsewhere. If the koalas in the southeast are under more pressure from loss of habitat, overcrowding, and having to deal with dogs and cars, then maybe they are less able to fight off the infections that don’t really affect other populations in the same way.

Working with this team has convinced me that our work on St. Bees Island is critical to the future of koalas in Queensland. While I am doing my best to help the investigation of koalas under serious threat, it is good to know that we can also learn some basic information about koala ecology from a reasonably healthy group that is not under the same sort of threat. In the future, groups like the St. Bees Island koalas might be the only populations from which we can learn about koala reproduction, physiology, and general ecology, so they are vital to the future of the species. I hope that St. Bees Island doesn’t end up as an “ark,” housing one of the last viable populations of koalas in Queensland, but if it does, at least we will know enough about these koalas to make the right decisions to ensure they do not go the same way as their southern counterparts.

Bill Ellis is a Clark Endowed Conservation Research Postdoctoral Fellow for the San Diego Zoo.

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