It’s not every day you get to see a koala in our local reserves, let alone one with a joey! One of our eagle-eyed community members, Tara Rose, spotted this cute couple at Castle Creek Conservation Reserve last week. Thanks for the awesome photos, Tara! While koalas have been recorded from Castle Creek, Leneva, Federation Hill, along the Kiewa River, and in Baranduda, they are not common and face many threats to their survival.

Seen today as an icon of Australia, the koala has had a complicated history since European settlement. Hunting for fur, habitat destruction, and disease have all contributed to the decline in numbers of koalas across most of their range. You can help by adding any sightings of koalas to citizen science platforms like iNaturalist which link to the national biodiversity database the Atlas of Living Australia.

We all know that koalas love gum leaves and although most of the koala’s diet consists of eucalypt leaves, they will eat other species including wattles, she-oaks, cypress-pine, and tea-trees. And of the 300 species of eucalypt available, they tend to show preference for only 30. These leaves are low in energy and hence the koala spends up to 20 hours a day sleeping. Rarely do they need to drink as they get most of their water from their food.

Here’s something you might not know – the closest living relative of koalas is the wombat! And like wombats, koalas have a rearward-facing pouch. Despite the young being underdeveloped when they are born, their lips, shoulders and forearms are more advanced, as the young needs to be able to crawl through its mother’s fur and attach itself to a teat in the pouch. Amazing effort for such a small baby! It takes around six months for an offspring to become fully furred, at which point it resembles an adult and can look outside the pouch. Young will continue to suckle for around a year before becoming independent. In the wild, koalas can live from 13-18 years and the populations from southern Australia are larger and have darker-coloured fur than their northern counterparts in response to a cooler climate.

Just remember that despite looking cute, these guys are not cuddly! They have long, sharp claws and their fore paws are interesting in that they have two digits opposed to the other three, giving them an ‘extra thumb’ for strong grip when climbing. They can also give you a nasty bite so it’s best not to go handling them. If you think a koala is injured or sick, you can call WIRES for advice.