by Susannah Keogh, Acting President, Friends of the Koala Inc, for the Dunoon and District Gazette
It has been over 12 months since our world changed here on the North Coast of NSW. After the second year of unprecedented drought, our sub-tropical selves were overwhelmed with a new reality. How do we deal with a fire season?
Decades of understory leaf matter was, for the first time in a long time, so dry that it was fuel for a fire just waiting to be ignited. We were not ready for this, not even a little bit. Floods we know well, storms we know how to prepare ourselves, but fire? We were caught completely off guard.
Koalas of course are not great at surviving fires, particularly intense “canopy” fires. You see, koalas climb to safety – in their minds, things on the ground are dangerous and they consider themselves safer in the branches of a very high tree.
Unfortunately, once they are at the top of the tree and the fire has reached the canopy, they have nowhere to go. Even if the fire isn’t intense and only burns the understory, the koalas will come to ground to change trees and burn their feet in the process.
The last year has been an enormous learning curve for us here at Friends of the Koala. While we have had single fire events which have affected our koalas in the past, this was the first time where essentially the whole region was on fire.
One of our koala champions, Maria Matthes, who looks after koalas mostly in the Ballina Shire, was on the ground searching for and rescuing koalas for the duration. While she was able to bring several koalas in for treatment, there were a few that escaped her attempts at capture and moved into areas where they were unable to be found.
A few weeks ago, Maria found one of the koalas she had bee trying to rescue since the fires started in Wardell last September. “Makawee” was seen in the heart of one of the fires and as you can see by the photos, she was badly burnt. It is quite amazing to see that she managed to survive all this time with such horrendous injuries – koalas are such stoic animals.
Makawee was 14 years old (very old) and by the time she got to us last month, was in bad condition – blind, riddled with chlamydia as well as many other things. While we were not able to save her from her many health issues this time, she has taught us a lot about what koalas can endure and survive from.
She was lucky not to have died from her fire related injuries but she certainly wouldn’t have been comfortable since they were sustained. Her paws were still peeling 12 months after they were burned, and her fur hadn’t grown back on her more severely burnt hands and face. She was a little legend and we will ever forget her resilience.
This article appeared in the Dunoon and District Gazette, December 2020 – January 2021.
