Deborah Tabart, chair of the conservation charity Australian Koala Foundation, said resources being spent on vaccinating koalas should be redirected at saving koala habitat.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the risk of sounding flippant, how can anyone be so delusional as to think that you can vaccinate 100,000 animals? It\u2019s just ridiculous,\u201d Tabart said on Friday.<\/p>\n
Tabart\u2019s foundation estimates there are fewer than 100,000 koalas in the wild. The government-backed National Koala Monitoring Program estimated last year there were between 224,000 and 524,000 koalas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI accept that chlamydia is an issue for koalas, but I also want people to understand that they\u2019re sick because they haven\u2019t got any habitat,\u201d Tabart said.<\/p>\n
The Queensland Conservation Council, an umbrella organization for more than 50 environmental groups across the state, welcomed the vaccine. But the council’s director, Dave Copeman, echoed Tabart\u2019s focus on preserving koala habitat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really good news. Chlamydia is one of the key stresses that has been putting pressure on koala populations,\u201d Copeman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cKoalas were at risk before chlamydia outbreaks, and they will remain at risk even if we manage chlamydia perfectly, because we keep on destroying their habitat,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Koalas are\u00a0listed as endangered species<\/a>\u00a0in the states of Queensland and New South Wales and in the Australian Capital Territory, with habitat loss due to\u00a0wildfires<\/a>\u00a0and urban expansion as the major threats. Chlamydia can cause urinary tract infections, infertility, blindness and death.<\/p>\n Treatment with antibiotics can disrupt an infected koala\u2019s ability to digest eucalyptus leaves \u2014 its sole food source \u2014 leading to starvation, the university said in a statement.<\/p>\n The research has been supported by the federal, New South Wales and Queensland governments.<\/p>\n Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt said his government had contributed to the vaccine\u2019s development through a 76 million Australian dollar ($50 million) Saving Koalas Fund.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that koalas need help to fight diseases like chlamydia. It\u2019s a widespread threat impacting their reproductive health and causing infertility,\u201d Watt said in a statement.<\/p>\n Koalas are iconic Australian marsupials, like\u00a0wombats<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0kangaroos<\/a>. They spend most of their time eating and sleeping in eucalyptus trees, and their paws have two opposing thumbs to help them grasp and climb up tree trunks.<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s wild koala populations have declined steeply in the past two decades.<\/p>\n Facing compounded threats from disease, habitat loss, climate change and road collisions, koalas could become extinct by 2050, according to a 2020 assessment from the New South Wales government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deborah Tabart, chair of the conservation charity Australian Koala Foundation, said resources being spent on vaccinating koalas should…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[85,19140,6819,134,11589,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-17291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-chlamydia-infections","10":"tag-endangered-species","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-koalas","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}