The New South Wales government rejected advice from an expert scientific panel before it attempted a failed reintroduction of koalas to a forest in the state’s south that resulted in the death of more than half the animals.
Internal documents show most members of a panel advising the state environment department on plans to relocate endangered koalas as part of a conservation strategy recommended against moving marsupials from forest near Wollongong to the South East Forest national park near Bega, a five-hour drive away.
The documents show eight of the 13 koalas moved in March died – one more than the government originally claimed when Guardian Australia revealed the deaths in July.
They died over a two-month period. Some were left in the forest for six weeks after the first deaths, contrary to the government’s public statement that all were taken into care once the first deaths were recorded.
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Postmortems, known as necropsies, performed on seven of the koalas showed they were malnourished and emaciated, but most of the reports obtained by Guardian Australia did not conclude a cause of death.
The koalas were moved – or translocated – as part of a project aiming to reintroduce the species to an area where the species was “locally extinct”.
The documents, some released to Guardian Australia under freedom-of-information laws and some obtained by the NSW Greens after a parliamentary order, show the panel of external scientists and department staff that advises the Minns government on scientific licensing of koala translocations recommended the environment department conduct captive feeding trials with the koalas before releasing them near Bega.
Mathew Crowther, a professor of conservation ecology at the University of Sydney and member of the panel, said independent experts on the panel thought the translocation plan was “particularly risky” because the koalas were being moved a long distance and the department had not done enough work to establish why they were not already living in the South East Forest.
He said the department had assessed which tree species were in the south-east, but panel members were concerned there had been no examination of nutrient and toxin levels in the leaves.
“I suspect that either the nitrogen in the leaves wasn’t high enough and/or the toxins were too high,” Crowther said. “Koalas, they have really tight diets … if the nitrogen isn’t high enough and the toxins are high, the koala basically can’t survive. It can’t get enough nutritional content.”
The documents show department officials rejected the panel’s suggestion of a captive feeding trial on the grounds there were “significant risks in containing koalas in enclosures, including adverse health outcomes associated with additional stress, potential for injury, decline in body condition and climbing fitness”.
The NSW Greens’ environment spokesperson, Sue Higginson, said the documents suggested the department was so determined to progress with the translocation it led to “a reckless indifference to the welfare and fate of the individual animals”. She said she had referred the deaths to the RSPCA for an investigation into possible animal cruelty.
“It is clear that independent expert advice was sidelined,” Higginson said. “Licences [to move the koalas] were granted in the face of the identified risk of failure and death, animals were left to die after the first koalas were found starved to death and then what took place can only be described as a coordinated cover-up of the truth.”
The documents show discrepancies between what the government told Guardian Australia when it first reported on the issue in July and what was being discussed internally.
The environment department initially said three koalas died over two days in April and that necropsies on two of the animals suggested they likely died of septicaemia, a bloodstream infection.
The department said the remaining 10 animals were then taken into care but four more died. The six remaining healthy koalas were returned to their original habitat in the Upper Nepean State Conservation Area, west of Wollongong.
At the time, a department spokesperson said the team working on the project was investigating a potential link between “septicaemia in koalas and adverse weather conditions, as the mortalities occurred four to five days after a significant rainfall event”.
But according to two department reports released in the cache of documents, the first sign of trouble in the South East Forest was when a female koala was found on the ground suffering dehydration and with its ear tag stuck in its collar on 2 April. It was treated and returned to its original habitat near Wollongong.
Over the following two days, two koalas were found dead in the South East Forest. A third had to be euthanised. Department staff then caught the remaining nine koalas for health checks. Six had lost weight and muscle mass and were taken into care, but three females were deemed healthy and re-released in the south-east and monitored.
Two of the group of six koalas in care died. Of the three that remained translocated, one was observed “unusually low in a tree” in early May, moved into care and found dead in its enclosure nine days later. Another was found on the ground close to death in late May and died while being taken to a vet. The third was recaptured five days later.
That koala and the four surviving koalas in care were ultimately returned to their home in the Upper Nepean. But the first koala female that had been removed from the south-east on 2 April was found dead and decomposed during a welfare check, increasing the death toll to eight.
The necropsy reports for seven of the dead koalas showed signs of pneumonia or sepsis in a couple of animals, but that all were suffering “emaciation”, “undernutrition” or poor body condition.
Higginson said she was particularly concerned by a necropsy report that showed one of the translocated female koalas was carrying a joey. The joey was found dead in the female’s pouch during a health check after the first koala deaths in April. The adult was re-released in the South East Forest, but was one of the animals that later died.
The documents show emails between department officials reported that the expert panel advising on whether the translocation should go ahead could not reach a consensus but that the proposal “largely was not supported”.
The panel made recommendations to address its concerns, including proposing a captive feeding trial before releasing the koalas in the south-east, but these had “largely not been accepted” by the department.
Instead, the email chain showed the department’s scientific licensing unit approved the translocation because it was a priority to meet a target of having eight koala translocation projects as part of a state conservation strategy for the species. Officials said “uncertainty around survival is part of the project” and the translocation team had given careful consideration to the habitat and built “checks and balances” into the project.
An environment department spokesperson said the translocation project attempted to re-establish a once healthy koala population in the south-east and the team working on the project considered advice from “a range of different experts”.
“In some instances, there was conflicting advice amongst the panel, veterinarians and other experts,” the spokesperson said. “A robust review is under way to examine all of the circumstances, including the planning, advice, implementation and post-release monitoring and response.”
They said the review was expected to be finished by December.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
