"Extreme drought, ferocious bushfires and urban development could make koalas extinct within seven years, environmentalists are warning," in an article in new online journal The Brisbane Times.
"Alarms about the demise of the iconic and peculiar animal, which sleeps about 20 hours per day and eats only the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, have been raised before.
"But Deborah Tabart, chief executive officer of the Australia Koala Foundation, believes the animal's plight is as bad as she has seen it in her 20 years as a koala advocate."
I don't know.
I reckon Debbie might be exaggerating.
In fact, it might well be concluded that the economics of conservation in Australia currently favour ignorance and failure. I've written that before: http://www.ipa.org.au/files/57-2-arekoalasindecline.pdf
And that was before I visited Gunnedah, 'The Koala Capital of the World':
Koalas have been known to eat camphor laurel when there is nothing else worth eating, like when the Sparks and Wildfires take over perfectly good forests and turn them into broadscale infernos.
The irony in all this is that a forest can be managed in a way that can at least quadruple the Koala carrying capacity.
The even bigger irony is that the dumb boofheads who make so much noise about protecting them haven't a clue how to do it. And I certainly have no intention of telling them how until we get all our property rights back.
It is also possible to make a tree so delicious to Koalas that they will completely defoliate it, repeatedly, until the tree dies. Pity.
rog,
Of course we're becoming animists. Having forsaken God, we're worshiping animals.
And if you don't like that, the government will take your money and spend it on animal-worship anyhow.
You're an animist whether you like it or not.