The Sandy Point Koala Group recently finished a three-year project involving a $50,000 grant from the Victorian State Govt to plant additional koala trees to connect up some isolated patches of trees and provide safer passage and future habitat for our current population of koalas. They now need to create a long-term plan for the further restoration and revegetating of areas of koala habitat. They also need to look at ways of improving the koalas’ genetic health to ensure their long-term survival.
Genetic testing Genetic testing conducted by Federation University during the period of the project has led to the understanding that genetic diversity in the Sandy Point koala population is significantly lower than koalas sampled from other areas of Victoria. The low level of genetic diversity in the koala population is likely driven by its isolation and consequent lack of recent koala migration into the area.
Inbreeding may or may not currently play a role in the population’s low diversity and warrants further investigation. Questions such as whether the high incidence of sarcoptic mange in the population is related to the population’s low level of genetic diversity also remain to be answered. As a result of this further genetic testing to help gain an understanding of the problems the koalas are facing with mange is due to their genetic makeup.
New plantings and maintenance of food trees Over 2,700 trees were planted over more than 2.5 hectares of farmland, coastal reserve, and private blocks during the three-year Koala Action Project but continuing to improve and extend koala habitat to support the local koala population is very important for the future preservation of the koalas. To help decide what steps to take next, a community meeting was held on 14 March. At this meeting they had a Zoom get together with koala expert Chris Daniels (Dept Environment and Water SA and CEO of Cleland Wildlife Park’s International Koala Centre of Excellence) and discussed with him the issues facing the koalas.
Some may have seen him featured in an episode of Catalyst in February this year: “Are we killing our koalas?’ (https://iview.abc.net. au/show/catalyst). If not, you can watch it now. Chris suggested that the group should have a variety of trees for koalas to forage on rather than just coast manna gum. They may love the coast manna gum but there is the risk if they rely too heavily on one species, it might become a problem if some disease was to affect this species of tree in the future. He thinks there should be plantings of a variety of species like they have in parts of South Australia, including perhaps SA Blue Gum, River Red Gum, Stringybark and the Western Australian Platypus Gum and he gave contact details of experts in this field who should be able to advise on what might suit our particular area of Victoria. He advised us however that if there was introduced other species of food trees into Sandy Point it would also be necessary to deal with the potential gut flora issues as well. His team at Cleland Wildlife Park are working on this and will be able to advise us how to manage this problem.
Tree corridors and translocation These are more long-term ideas that Chris suggested might be considered by the group. Because of the koalas’ very narrow genetic diversity Chris suggested the group might like to investigate planting tree corridors as a means of connecting the koalas to other groups, preferably in the Strzeleckis. Alternatively, we could translocate koalas from other areas into ours. This is a field of work that his team at the Cleland Wildlife Park in South Australia are currently working on.
Sandy Point Community Group (SPCG)
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