About 5:30am on Friday, October 3, a fine spring morning, a service station attendant on his way to work on the south-west outskirts of Sydney spotted a dead koala lying by the side of the road.<\/p>\n
He phoned it in to the WIRES wildlife rescue service, where his call was logged as the 50th known koala fatality on this stretch of Appin Road since counting began three years ago.<\/p>\n
Warning: This story contains graphic imagery.<\/p>\n
The road runs north-south through semi-rural Appin on the city’s fringe, where Sydney’s suburban sprawl is pushing deeper into koala habitat.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Koala habitats are increasingly coming under pressure from Sydney’s suburban sprawl. (ABC News: Justin Huntsdale)<\/p>\n
Wildlife groups usually see a spike in koala deaths on the road at this time of year as the animals move west from the Georges River to the Nepean River during the breeding season \u2014 a journey that requires them to cross the busy Appin Road.<\/p>\n
But this fatality has caused more than the usual frustration and despair among wildlife groups, as well as some embarrassment in political circles.<\/p>\n
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Gage survived a collision with a car that killed his mother two years ago. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
This particular koala had a name and a remarkable and well-documented history.<\/p>\n
He was called Gage, and he had already survived a collision with a car that killed his mother exactly two years earlier.<\/p>\n
His release back into the wild had been hailed by politicians as a conservation success story, an event captured on camera at a photo opportunity with the state’s environment minister, Penny Sharpe.<\/p>\n
But within 18 months, Gage would be dead, another number added to the growing list of koala road fatalities.<\/p>\n
News of Gage’s death<\/p>\n
The young koala thrived being raised by a wildlife carer. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Volunteer wildlife carer Emma Meddows, the principal of a local primary school, remembers being woken that Friday morning by a flurry of texts.<\/p>\n
“People on their way to work started messaging me,” she said.<\/p>\n
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Volunteer wildlife carer Emma Meddows looked after Gage for seven months after his rescue. (ABC News: Simon Amery)<\/p>\n
News soon filtered through that Gage, a koala she had hand-raised for seven months when he was rescued as a joey, had been killed on the road.<\/p>\n
“It was a very hard morning,” Ms Meddows said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I met up to collect him because I guess I needed to see him for the last time.”<\/p>\n
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Gage was a healthy weight when he was weighed after his death. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
At the wildlife hospital in Camden, his weight was recorded as 9.65 kilograms.<\/p>\n
“He was really in his prime. There was that bittersweet moment of being extremely proud to have raised such a wild, thriving young koala and then, yeah, it was hard,” she said.<\/p>\n
“He survived something that most koalas don’t survive, and then to be taken exactly the same way, it was actually really devastating to see that.”<\/p>\n
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Gage was found dead on Appin Road opposite a gap in the koala fencing.\u00a0 (Facebook: Ricardo Lonza)<\/p>\n
‘Fanfare’ at Gage’s release<\/p>\n
Gage had been released back into the wild along with another rescued koala called Mack on April 28 last year.<\/p>\n
Ms Sharpe invited television crews to film the occasion for the evening news bulletins.<\/p>\n
“It’s a pretty amazing thing to be standing on the edge of Sydney \u2026 to see two koalas released safely back into the bush,” she told gathered reporters.<\/p>\n
“The commitment that this government has to protecting that population into the future is extremely strong.”<\/p>\n
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Environment Minister Penny Sharpe, right, attended the release.\u00a0 (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Local Labor MP Greg Warren did the honours in opening the cage door and ushering Gage into a nearby tree.<\/p>\n
“There’s not too many prouder moments you get as a local member,” he told reporters afterwards.<\/p>\n
This week, Ms Sharpe declined to comment on Gage’s death.<\/p>\n