Bushwalk Australia

I drove past a dead Koala on the Picton Rd this morning. One less in a already struggling population.

Yet they have had to cull them down at Cape Otway due to a population boom and subsequent stripping of the trees ?

It's the time of year when males are on the move looking for mates and young Koalas leave mum to start their own life journey. Unfortunately this results in some mortalities on our roads. Never nice to see one as road kill.

Someone with some interest in Koalas must have seen it too because he was gone on my way home?

A struggling population!? Seriously, that is far out.
Have you seen the extensive damage along the entire length of Lighthouse Road (aka Cape Otway Road) in the Great Otway National Park? The ghostly barren gums entirely denuded of foliage due to these pestiferous marsupials. Culls along here have yielded more than 30 koalas per square hectare — far too many for the environment to cope with. Frankly, "they cannot be culled fast enough, in great enough numbers", and that comment is straight from two rangers at Blanket Bay on last Saturday. Piddling, stinking, scratching, rotten little things.

Biggles:

An animal can be in plague proportions in some limited areas and yet still be vulnerable when considered on a larger scale and even in danger of extinction in a large part of its usual range.

Yeah, I was referring to the specific location where the dead Koala was hit by the car.

There has been the odd sighting lately where people believed there was none of these to be found, so, understandably the locals where exited to see a an improvement in population....except for this latest casualty.

north-north-west wrote:Biggles:

An animal can be in plague proportions in some limited areas and yet still be vulnerable when considered on a larger scale and even in danger of extinction in a large part of its usual range.

The GONP does not fall into a "limited area" by definition of geography and spread. The koala is neither threatened as a species or vulnerable here in Victoria (the situation is known to be different in other States, with WA and NT having no declared position) and the State Government makes its own management decisions regarding populations, including populations in the Great Otway National Park and the Grampians.

Koalas do not necessarily die solely from being hit by cars, although that happens, just as kangaroos are hit by cars too. Koalas often tumble from great heights onto the road (Cape Otway Road especially) and suffer terrible injuries. Their young usually do not survive such trauma events.

Parks Victoria is responsible for decisions in National Park environments. There is no danger of extinction through management decisions, even though the public is divided on the merits of culls — they are necessary as a preservation strategy, not the other way around! The culls are done simply because of known over-population problems, creating odd in-breeding with very poor genetic diversity, and nowhere is this more starkly evident than in the Great Otway National Park. Despite that, visitors are not going to be disappointed with a koala no-show! I noted 16 around Blanket Bay, plus echidna, platypus (Blanket Bay Creek), a fat, well-fed tiger snake, a not-so-shy brown snake (Katabanut Trk), bush rats, white-winged choughs and currawongs. One wiley currawong swooped into my bowl of wee' bix and peaches, treating it as his personal Trevi fountain!

I wonder what method of execution they employ on the sluggish old koala?

puredingo wrote:I wonder what method of execution they employ on the sluggish old koala?

You really don't want to know...

Biggles wrote:

north-north-west wrote:Biggles:

An animal can be in plague proportions in some limited areas and yet still be vulnerable when considered on a larger scale and even in danger of extinction in a large part of its usual range.

The GONP does not fall into a "limited area" by definition of geography and spread. The koala is neither threatened as a species or vulnerable here in Victoria (the situation is known to be different in other States, with WA and NT having no declared position) and the State Government makes its own management decisions regarding populations, including populations in the Great Otway National Park and the Grampians.

Yeah, but the OP was about Picton in NSW. Different situation.

Plus, there's enough threats facing koalas at the moment, even in Victoria, to suggest that perhaps their conservation status should be upgraded. Certainly, any koala losses in the area through Picton and Camden to Appin are really unfortunate; there's not enough of them left locally, and our local councils aren't doing much to help.

From memory, a lot of the problems in the Otway Ranges was a result of the species of Eucalyptus present, Ribbon Gum (Eucalyptus viminalis).