TRANSCRIPT
With a certain spring in her step while climbing a tree, little Macklin launches into her new life.
Found orphaned 9-months ago she was treated at the Wildlife Health and Conservation Hospital at the University of Sydney's Camden campus before going into the care of WIRES volunteers, like Emma Meddows.
“If we can get those animals back out here where they belong then that is the ultimate reward for a rehabilitator. Mack's journey, I guess as you can see today has been an amazing one. You know, she's, she's quite a little feisty thing at times, and has definitely got her own personality. Each koala has their own personality."
And that reward came back two-fold- with a second young koala joining Macklin in her new home.
Gage, a male baby, was also found last year - his mother killed by a car.
It's taken months of love and care to get this duo ready for release.
“Gage as you would have noticed climbing up the tree is a bit of a lazy teenage boy he is kind of, I’m sure he’s not going to be too happy tonight when he realises he’s not going to have support feed ahahah. He's more than capable, he's been climbing in a self-release enclosure for the last two or three months. So they are both more than capable. We both know that they can climb we've put them in a self-release enclosure just to ensure that they're fine here for the next few days, possibly up to the next week."
But many others need help too, so an announcement for a special koala care centre, announced by New South Wales Climate Change and Environment Minister Penny Sharpe, is welcome:
“Today what I’m announcing is support for those people who do this work, the NSW Government is going to provide $ 4.5 million to help upgrade and expand services at the vet hospital at Cobbity at the University of Sydney. It will mean that it can be much longer time, 24/7, over the weekends, but we can really train up the vets of the future to be able to do this really important wildlife care. It means also that we're going to provide $500,000 to local wildlife carers. Emm and Tracy do this for nothing. It is an extraordinarily extraordinary labor of love that they do, but we want to support them to do the things that they need to do and that we rely on them."
Dr Stuart Blanch is a Conservation Scientist with the World Wildlife Fund.
He told SBS News last year that the situation for koalas is dire.
"The number of koalas in Queensland and New South Wales halved between the years 2000 and 2020. That's a big decline, 50% over just 20 years. That's why those koalas are now listed as endangered under federal environmental law. In South Australia and Victoria the story is a bit different. In some areas there are a lot of koalas and the numbers of building up, particularly in plantations, but also in some national parks."
Professor Annabelle Olsson is with the Wildlife Health and Conservation Hospital.
She explains what the new funding will be used for.
“What we’re going to be able to do now is expand those facilities so that we actually have habitat enclosures within the hospital precinct so that we can provide the secondary care that is often repeat blood samples, medications, or diagnostic tests, without having animals having to be transported to and fro. And then once they're relatively low maintenance and don't require this hands on veterinary veterinary management, they'll then go out into the carer population to go through the process such as you've seen with Gage and Macklin today."
The half a million dollars will go to support the work of volunteers, Ms Sharpe says.
“When we see a koala knocked on the road we just expect there’s someone that’s going to come and pick it up and look after it well Emma and Tracy and the many other WIRES wildlife carers do that every single weekend and they really do it 24/7. We will provide support for them, but we also want to provide the support to basically look after this koala population. There's many, many other things and research going on. We're creating a koala National Park in this area. We want this population to thrive into the future and I'm so pleased to be here and to be part of really the village that it takes to look after these very precious and iconic animals. ”
The koalas will stay inside the enclosure for the next week to ensure they’ve developed the necessary skills to fend for themselves, then the fence will be removed so they can join the dozens of others that have been rehabilitated and released into the local area.
