Are Australia’s Koalas, Battling Climate Change and Chlamydia, On the Path to Extinction?
Jay, a three-year-old male koala bear eats leaves at Sydney Wildlife World, June 3, 2011 in Sydney, Australia.
This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in LeMonde.
(SYDNEY) Although they appear in just about every Australian postcard, koala bears are actually quite hard to spot in the wild, where their numbers are gradually declining. Scientists are now sounding the alarm and urging Australia’s senate to declare the iconic, sleepy-eyed marsupials an endangered species.
Scientists estimate Australia’s koala bear population at somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000. “We cannot be totally sure because we don’t receive enough public subsidies to thoroughly study the subject. But it is clear that the number is dropping,” says Alistair Melzer, a senior researcher at Queensland University. In the Gold Coast region, the number of koala bears seems to have decreased by as much as 80% since the 1990s. Die Welt
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