In a week when the nation’s media was focussed on political events in Canberra, another news story went almost unnoticed.
It was a brief report on the sad passing of Pan Da koala. Pan Da, so named because he was rescued as an orphan and delivered to his Queensland carer, Deidre De Villiers, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics in 2008, achieved public recognition, including 13,000 Facebook fans, as the face of the Redlands’ koalas.
Pan Da was picked up by the Redland Wildlife Rescue Service last Friday after a resident discovered him in a poor condition. The call came just ten weeks after Pan Da had been returned to the wild after specialist treatment for a bout of cystitis. Sadly, this third human intervention in his young life would be his last, and Pan Da had to be euthanized at the Australian Wildlife Hospital. Necropsy results showed that kidney disease had claimed the life of this much loved koala.
As with Sam the koala, who succumbed to koala chlamydiosis after surviving the Black Saturday bushfires, Pan Da’s celebrity status did not afford him any immunity from the ravages of disease which are having a devastating effect on wild koala populations, particularly in NSW and Queensland. By way of example, recent research suggests that in many populations across south-east Queensland more than 50 per cent of female koalas are infertile because of chlamydial infection.
This is a time when we clearly need to be stepping up our efforts to address the koala disease epidemic. The Queensland Government has committed $400K to vital research and we are eagerly awaiting the announcement of the successful funding applicants. This is a long overdue step in the right direction.
Redland City Mayor Melva Hobson issued a statement following Pan Da’s passing and said, in part - “I urge everyone who mourns Pan Da’s passing not to let it be in vain. We can all continue to take individual action to help koalas - simple things like making our backyards koala friendly, confining or restraining our dogs at night, driving carefully and retaining and planting trees for koalas to live in and feed from.” We also need to lobby our government representatives to ensure that research into koala disease receives meaningful and continuing funding. We have enormously talented research scientists in this country, like those who have formed the Koala Research Network, and they are simply asking for the opportunity to be able to make a difference.
Mayor Hobson also added, “I have directly lobbied the Federal Minister for Environment Protection, Heritage and the Arts, the Hon Peter Garrett in the past week for a declaration of the koala population in south-east Queensland as threatened and endangered under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (the EPBC Act)”, a call that has also been made by the Koala Diaries team.
Comments
Post has no comments.