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A koala clings to a mostly stripped tree on French Island.Credit: Scott Coutts<\/p>\n
The koalas on French Island, which is almost free from feral cats and foxes<\/a> and two-thirds national park, don\u2019t suffer from the deadly chlamydia that has devastated populations elsewhere.<\/p>\n However, the fragmentation of Victoria\u2019s remnant koala populations leaves them vulnerable to localised conditions, including drought and overpopulation.<\/p>\n The Victorian Koala Management Strategy, developed in 2023, notes that without fertility control, the \u201cchlamydia-free koala population of French Island will double itself within five years\u201d.<\/p>\n Scott Coutts retired four years ago as a park ranger of 35 years\u2019 experience on French Island, where he was helping manage its koala population.<\/p>\n He estimated the population had grown from a relatively stable 5000 to up to 12,000 in the past decade as the number of koalas translocated to other islands dwindled.<\/p>\n \u201cNo translocations have happened since [2015], and not enough female koalas have been implanted [with birth control] to do anything about the population, which doubles every three or four years because they don\u2019t have any diseases,\u201d Coutts said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the koala population on French Island, it\u2019s always been known that they\u2019re a very fecund population.\u201d<\/p>\n Associate Professor Desley Whisson said while koalas could reproduce at the rate of only one joey a year, there was no way for them to disperse off French Island, meaning their numbers steadily increased.<\/p>\n She said the levels of suffering endured by the koalas on French Island were frustrating and distressing, and said the government had failed to take swift action to alleviate suffering.<\/p>\n A distressed and unwell koala on French Island.Credit: Kathryn Shain<\/p>\n In 2013, she surveyed starving koalas in Cape Otway trying to eat bracken, grass and even dirt.<\/p>\n \u201cI think I\u2019m still traumatised by that,\u201d said Whisson, who has advised governments on koala management strategy for almost 20 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of the situation on French Island, Whisson said: \u201cIt\u2019s just horrific.<\/p>\n \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be something that needs discussion … there should be something done to alleviate that suffering, and it should never have got to this point to start with if there had been effective management implemented years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n In the recent National Parks Act annual report<\/a>, Parks Victoria reported it had conducted health checks and fertility control programs at Budj Bim National Park, Raymond Island and French Island last spring and this autumn, although it did not provide details of how many animals were sterilised.<\/p>\n A koala lies dead on French Island in a recent photo taken by former park ranger Scott Coutts.Credit: Scott Coutts<\/p>\n When this masthead visited last month, the prominence of koalas sitting in spindly trees low to the ground was striking. One koala was observed in a tree largely stripped of leaves, about two metres off the ground.<\/p>\n French Island resident Kathryn Shain started a petition<\/a> calling on the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action to find humane solutions to the starvation of local koalas and the destruction of French Island\u2019s delicate environment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re losing the koalas to starvation at a rapid rate, but we\u2019re also losing our trees,\u201d Shain said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ecological balance on the island is right out of kilter … there needs to be a major intervention right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Koalas are rapidly running out of food as residents urge the government to send more resources to French Island.Credit: Sue Jenkins<\/p>\n Fellow resident David Paonetti said he had seen some koalas so sick they could no longer climb trees and simply sat beneath them.<\/p>\n \u201cYou see them wandering from one tree to the other, but there is really no food for them,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to eat other stuff. It\u2019s not good for them, you know, it makes them sick … you can see them in a pine tree, trying to eat the pine needles.\u201d<\/p>\n Paonetti, who has planted hundreds of trees since moving to the island in 1998, said residents were facing the heartbreaking decision to put bands around some trees so they weren\u2019t killed by starving koalas.<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n \u201cI would say [of] 400 to 500 trees [on my property], I think half of them are dead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are suffering as people of French Island to see that because, of course, we love the koala. So it\u2019s putting a toll on us. It\u2019s putting the toll on the koala.\u201d<\/p>\n Moving koala populations has been attempted in several locations across Australia, but is a difficult process. The Guardian reported in May<\/a> that more than half of a group of 13 koalas translocated to a forest on the NSW South Coast died.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/289c0527890779c1c27f0f848502d9b0c6bb3cd1.jpeg\")
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