“Today I will raise the protection of koalas in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland by placing them on the endangered species list, rather than their previous status of vulnerable,” Environment Minister Sussan Ley said in a statement.
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The measure does not affect the other two states with koalas, Australia South and Victoria, whose populations of these animals are not considered endangered.
The minister also indicated that under the National Environmental Law, she will coordinate next week with the two state governments of New South Wales and Queensland, as well as that of the Australian Capital Territory, which includes Canberra, a recovery plan.
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The Executive of Canberra, who is seeking re-election in this year’s elections in Australia, has allocated some USD 74 million local (USD 53 million US or 46.4 million euros) in the protection of koalas, a very popular cause in the country.
According to official research from 2020, koalas could be extinct from eastern Australia by 2050 as a result of continued habitat destruction and increasingly frequent natural disasters hitting the region.
Although the official figures register 180,000 copies in the east of the country, Deb Tabart, from the Koala Foundation, assured the local public broadcaster ABC that in reality there are between 50,000 and 80,000 copies left in the entire country.
“In 2019, right after the bushfires, Minister Law brought us all together at a round table and I handed her the koala habitat atlas of their entire geographic range, which has taken us 23 years to create,” Tabart said. .
This native Australian animal, which also suffers from potentially fatal chlamydia, has lost much of its habitat in Australia as a result of urban, agricultural and mining development, as well as the climate changeas well as for the marketing of their skins until the 1930s.
The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), which in the aboriginal language means “without drinking” – alluding to the fact that 90 percent of its hydration comes from the eucalyptus leaves it eats – is especially sensitive to any change in the environment.
The koala, which spends about 20 hours a day dozing or resting and uses the remaining four hours to feed on leaves of various species of eucalyptus, was one of the biggest victims of the forest fires of the so-called “Black Summer” of 2019-2020, which killed more than 60,000 copies.
Source: EFE
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