<
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/science/australia-wildlife-koalas.html>
"It was spring in Queensland, Australia, a season when many wild animals find
themselves in trouble, and the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital was a blur of fur
and feathers.
A groggy black swan emerged from the X-ray room, head swaying on its long neck.
A flying fox wore a tiny anesthetic mask. An injured rainbow lorikeet squawked
in its cage. (“Very angry,” a sign warned.)
“We see everything,” Dr. Michael Pyne, the hospital’s senior veterinarian. Also
on the schedule for the day: three eagles, two carpet pythons, a blue-faced
honeyeater, a short-eared brushtail possum and, Dr. Pyne said, “a whole heap of
koalas.”
More than a dozen koalas were convalescing in open-air enclosures, wrapping
their woolly arms around the trunks of eucalyptus trees. The wards were often
full; in 2023, the hospital admitted more than 400 koalas, a fourfold increase
from 2010.
The surge has been driven largely by the spread of chlamydia, a devastating
bacterial infection. But the hospital was also seeing more koalas with
traumatic injuries, including those caused by cars and dogs. Starving,
dehydrated koalas came in during droughts; burned koalas appeared after
wildfires. Occasionally, koalas even turned up with injuries caused by cows.
“That’s why they’re endangered,” Dr. Pyne said. “Everything’s against them.”"
Via
What Could Go Right? One Uninterrupted Decline:
https://theprogressnetwork.org/global-child-mortality-declines/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
