Saturday, March 19, 2005
Banning Koala dog food
Some months ago, passport in hand (for we were heading south of the river) we visited the Daisy Hill Koala Sanctuary, only to find it closed in the aftermath of a storm. Authorities had declared that falling branches were a danger to walkers.

Unperturbed we headed back the next week with the expectation of breaking our koala duck. As we were to discover, authorities were definitely not concerned about the dangers of falling koalas.

We spent three – not wholly unpleasant – hours, necks craned and ears strained, hacking through scrubby bush on the lookout for Australia’s most famous furry icon. I had read that South East Queensland is home to some 70,000 koalas – the densest population in Australia. As Daisy Hill is an integral part of the ‘Koala Coast’ protected area, I reckoned there was a good chance of bagging a wild one.

That is, until we reached the Visitor Centre at the end of our walk, where we learned that this 70 hectare forest is home to just 60-70 koalas. Seemingly, even in their most productive areas, they are somewhat thin on the ground (or in the trees).

But Queensland was once home to millions of these animals. When a ban on hunting koalas was temporarily rescinded back in 1927, to help break the economic depression, in just one month of open season, 584,000 koalas were killed for their fur. Compare this now to the current population, estimated to between 100,000 and 300,000. In the Brisbane environs, there are just over 10,000.

This current population no longer faces the threat of the huntsman’s gun, but is under assault from ‘development’ and the houses, cars and dogs which comes along with it.

Late last year, the Queensland Government bit the bullet and finally classified the Koala as ‘vulnerable’ in the SEQ Bioregion. This kicked started the legislative process that led to the promulgation of the Koala Conservation Plan.

The Environmental Protection Agency rushed to print with Draft State Planning Policy 1/05 and received Cabinet sign-off on wide ranging conservation strategies. The planning policy has designated areas where new development will be prohibited and other areas where future and current approvals will be subject to assessment against strict koala friendly criteria, such as retention of corridors, phased clearing, native landscaping and roadkill mitigation.

The development prohibition designations are not overly contentious. Much of it lies within watershed areas already protected or in the ‘Regional Landscape and Rural Production Areas’ as designated in the Draft SEQ Regional Plan. Only small areas of new prohibitions have been identified.

The biggest battles will be fought over dog management. Approximately 12% of all koala deaths are a result of dog attacks and nearly all of these are from dogs greater than 10kg.
But dog management does not sit neatly within a planning scheme, apart from on leasehold land, where conditions can be applied which require the freeholder to impose a statutory covenant to restrict dogs.

Therefore dogs must be managed through a range of local laws, enforced by councils.
Most dog management issues are related to the problems of ACCEPTABILTY, ENFORCEMENT and EFFECTIVENESS of any restrictions imposed.

A number of strategies have been put forward for consideration, each with strengths and weakness as far as the three issues are concerned: EDUCATION – acceptable, easy to implement, but has so far not worked.

• MUZZLING – onerous on dog owners, difficult to enforce (especially at night) but effective in reducing koala deaths
• SCALED REGISTRATION FEES – may increase rates of non-registration and non-reporting of koala attacks; many people would simply accept the fees and so it would not necessarily prevent continued koala attacks
• INCREASED FINES FOR KOALA ATTACKS – will reduce reported incidences of attack and will not prevent koalas from being attacked
• CAGING OR RESTRAINING DOGS – nearly impossible to enforce; it will be a huge cost to owners and reduce the role of dogs as security; yet will prevent koala attacks
• EXCLUDING KOALAS – again big costs on owners through installation of fencing, difficult to enforce on existing development and restricting koala movement impacts health of local population
• PHASE OUT KEEPING OF (LARGE) DOGS IN KOALA HABITAT AREAS – (top of EPA’s wish list) probably unacceptable to voters, certainly difficult to enforce, but likely to save koalas

All development tends to bring dogs and dangers to koalas, even ‘appropriate development’. Animal management issues will therefore become more important in protecting koala numbers as deaths from other factors are reduces through better designed planning schemes and the protection of key koala sensitive areas.

But pets engender emotive debates. Telling people they can’t have a dog will raise howls of objection from those who assume that owning a dog is some kind of ‘right’. And surprisingly, many property owners consider the backyard is no place for a koala.

Fortunately, most people are reasonable and councils – who will probably bear the brunt of resourcing the regulations – are supportive of the broad aims of the conservation plan, if somewhat nervous of the implications of enforcement.

It remains to be seen whether koalas and any development are in any way compatible. So far even development incorporating wildlife corridors has seen rapid declines in koala densities and increasing numbers of infertile or diseased animals. But with luck (and it is certainly not for sure), such development when combined with effective animal management strategies and roadkill mitigation may at least allow a reduced density population to survive.

If not, the million extra people coming to the Brisbane region in the next 20 years will undoubtedly see the extinction of the koala in SEQ.

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