12 koalas ‘heroically’ rescued from Australian mega-fire by San Diego team, zoo says
A San Diego Zoo team’s quick thinking saved a dozen koalas from the rampant fires that have engulfed Australia in recent weeks, according to the zoo.
San Diego Zoo Global researcher Kellie Leigh led a team that quickly grabbed 12 koalas as bushfires spread in the Blue Mountains region of Australia, the zoo said in a news release Thursday. The Blue Mountains are home to a vital segment of koalas: the most genetically diverse population of the marsupials anywhere in the world.
“This makes this particular population very important for the survival of the species,” Leigh said in a statement.
Mega-fires tearing through the region in recent weeks threatened the animals and devastated more than 2.5 million acres of land, according to the zoo.
“Kellie and her team acted heroically, in the face of a mega-fire event, to save individual koalas who may be important to maintaining sustainable populations of the species in the future,” said Allison Alberts, chief conservation and research officer of San Diego Zoo Global. “It is this dedication to saving species that characterizes the conservationists that work with us.”
The rescued koalas were handed over to the Sydney-based Taronga Zoo to ride out the catastrophic fires, the zoo said.
San Diego Zoo Global researchers are prepared to head back into the mountains to look for koalas that survived the bushfires.
“We are tremendously grateful for their efforts, and we know that they have a lot of new work to do, to recover the species in the Blue Mountains,” Alberts said.
Leigh, who is also the zoo’s director of Science for Wildlife, said the team has “been working in this area for many years now, tracking koalas to learn about them and to assess their population numbers.”
According to the zoo, researchers in the area rely on radio-tagging to track each koala because rugged landscapes and towering trees make it difficult to monitor the animals by eye.
“These fires are completely changing how wildlife management will be carried out in future in Australia,” Leigh said. “In the short term, we will be engaging in search and rescue for wildlife that needs assistance, and putting in water sources for the wildlife that have been left behind.”
Leigh said the long-term goal will be to help koalas thrive in the wild again.
Megan Owen, director of population sustainability at San Diego Zoo Global, said that researchers are “hearing from our colleagues in Australia that they have tremendous concern regarding what species and habitats will remain once this event is over.”
The fires were driven by record-high temperatures and drought, impacting millions of acres across the country. Koalas were particularly hard hit: Australia Environment Minister Sussan Ley said last month that almost a third of koalas might have died in New South Wales because of the bushfires, McClatchy News reported.
“Historically, small wildfires have occurred naturally without devastating an entire population,” Owen said. “In our modern world, climate change is acting as a threat multiplier, creating scenarios where species are pushed suddenly to the brink of extinction and need immediate human intervention to help them survive.”
This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 7:29 PM with the headline "12 koalas ‘heroically’ rescued from Australian mega-fire by San Diego team, zoo says."
