They want to cull *koala bears*!

So many koalas, so few palatable ideas for curbing them


July is "Save the Koala Month" in Australia. So it may come as a surprise that conservation groups in the state of South Australia want some koalas shot.

he groups, led by the Nature Conservation Society of South Australia, are lobbying the state government to cull the teddy bearlike marsupials overpopulating an island south of Adelaide. They want the government to stand up to international pressure and abandon a new $3 million sterilization and relocation program.

"No one wants to see animals being shot, but we need to be thinking more about sustainable ecosystem management rather than appeasing international tourists," said Matthew Turner, a scientific officer with the Nature Conservation Society.

Kangaroo Island, which is known for the abundance of its namesake marsupial and has one of Australia´s best-preserved native ecosystems, is home to about 30,000 koalas. The seemingly harmless creatures have eaten their way through hundreds of acres of their favorite food, eucalyptus, leaving vast tracks of barren, dying trees next to rivers and creeks.

Turner estimated that as many as 20,000 koalas on the island should be killed to bring the population to a sustainable level that could then be controlled by sterilization or other methods.

The state government, which in May announced a four-year program to sterilize 8,000 koalas on the island and relocate some to the mainland, said it will make the plan work even if it has to boost the budget.

Since 1997, when a cull proposal was rejected, 4,600 koalas have been sterilized. But the animals still have flourished partly because they have no natural predators on the island.

Professor Hugh Possingham, a specialist in ecology and mathematics at the University of Queensland, said that unless 70 percent of the animals are sterilized, the population will keep swelling.

If the state sterilized 8,000 animals this year, there could be 44,000 koalas on the island by 2010 because they can double their numbers every five years.

The only other option, a one-time koala kill, is controversial.

When the South Australia government was looking at ways to control koalas last year they were overwhelmed with "dozens and dozens" of e-mails, letters and phone calls from the U.S., Europe and Japan, most of which threatened a tourism embargo in the event of a cull.

"Logic says it´s the right thing to do if you look at it in a cold-hearted way," said John Hill, state minister for the environment and conservation.

Not nearly that cuddly

A cull would be a cheap, simple solution but would generate negative publicity. "The image projected across the globe would be horrendous," Hill said, likening such a reaction to the international outcry against seal clubbing in Canada.

Only the koala prompts such a reaction. Conservation groups are baffled by opposition to culling koalas, which were introduced to the island in the 1920s. Several thousand of the island´s native wallabies and possums are killed every year to control theirs populations.

Turner attributed public empathy for the koala to the "cute and cuddly factor." However, he urged tourists to recognize the complexity of the issue. It isn´t as easy as moving them to another state because they´re inbred, not resistant to a mainland koala disease and probably wouldn´t survive, he said.

Besides that, wild koalas aren´t exactly the teddy bears so fondly imagined by tourists. They may look docile because their nutrient-poor diet of eucalyptus leaves means they move slowly and sleep 20 hours a day. However, with their long sharp claws, they can be quite aggressive if they´re provoked or feel threatened.

Another part of the resistance to a koala cull--even in Australia-- stems from the animal being listed as "vulnerable" in two other states.

They are still suffering the effects of slaughtering during the early 20th Century, and the spread of residential housing and agriculture is pushing them out of their natural habitat along the east coast.

`Band-Aid approach´ seen

The Australian Koala Foundation, organizer of Save the Koala Month, estimated there are fewer than 100,000 wild koalas in native habitat, which excludes places like Kangaroo Island, though that number has been contested as too low.

Still, the Koala Foundation, which opposes a cull, calls sterilization a "Band-Aid approach."

The foundation maintains that several factors, including agricultural practices, have harmed the island´s ecosystem. Replanting and restoring native habitat is the answer, it contends, but government and conservation groups question its practicality.

So while it may seem contradictory for conservation groups to support a cull, they see no better option.

Said Greg Ogle, state coordinator for The Wilderness Society, which has worked to protect koala habitat: "The situation is getting desperate."