The rapid banging on the backdoor of a suburban home at 2am was enough to wake its occupant. The commotion was unlike anything Joelle had heard since she moved to Australia from Mauritius 37 years ago.
Speaking with Yahoo News, Joelle recalled the fright she received that spring morning. “All of my yard is fenced up. I thought it could have been a man, so I put the lights on,” she said.
Her report related to one of several similar incidents across the southwest Sydney suburb of Glenfield that had been recorded on a map by a specialist monitoring the problem. But they are linked to a wider issue that began decades ago.
Having only recently moved to the area, Joelle couldn’t have expected to know the suburb had once been habitat for one of Australia’s most well-loved animals, the koala. A species that’s now sadly threatened with extinction in NSW.
“I had never seen a koala in my yard before. I just moved to this little place,” Joelle said.
After realising there was no threat to her safety, Joelle went back to bed. But at 4am she was woken once more. And it was after that second incident that her daughter advised her to call animal rescue service WIRES for help.
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The koala was filmed banging on the woman’s backdoor. Source: Joelle Merton
Rescuer cries after seeing lost koala
Rescuer Inga Tiere had been getting calls about the koala throughout the week, and she plotted each sighting on a map. The koala was first spotted wandering down busy Canterbury Road at night, and there were concerns it would be hit and killed. Then the animal was seen wandering through yards, searching for a tree to climb for refuge.
Instead, when Inga finally tracked the koala down, it was found clinging to a small bush next to a Colorbond fence.
When koalas are spotted in unusual places like supermarkets, train stations or petrol stations, the incidents are often shared as heartwarming, light news stories. But no koala wanders into an urbanised suburb out of choice.
“I cried when I saw this video. He was looking for his tree, which hadn’t been there for years,” Inga said.
The same sad situation has been replicated across the country, particularly when infrastructure isn’t installed to help wildlife displaced by development. But the problem isn’t just limited to koalas — kangaroos have recently been found lost inside a Bunnings and a KFC. And Yahoo has reported on incidents of reptiles being buried alive on construction sites by developers in decades past.
How koalas could be protected in Sydney suburb
Inga has now been a wildlife rescue volunteer for almost 11 years. But when she arrived in Australia from Germany in 1980, she too had been totally unaware koala habitat was being destroyed in her area to create new homes in the suburb she ultimately moved to.
The koala was found clinging to a small backyard tree. It was easily caught and then released into nearby bushland. Source: Inga Tiere/WIRES
Habitat loss was singled out by a NSW parliamentary committee as a major threat to the survival of the koala. It warned the species would be extinct in the state by 2050 without “urgent” government intervention, however key habitat continues to be cleared for new homes in Sydney’s southwest.
In established suburbs like Glenfield, Inga believes the problem of koalas being lost could be mitigated if more corridors were built to allow koalas to safely cross major roads. While some have been built in NSW, they are few and far between and koalas continue to be hit at an alarming rate. Since July, 2022 at least 101 koalas have been killed on the roads across Sydney’s southwest — 48 of them died this year.
In Glenfield, Inga would like to see a koala crossing built on Canterbury Road at one particular point where the animals are frequently hit. Even though the stretch has long been lined with houses, the road is a historical pathway that koalas still attempt to traverse as they try to reach fragmented patches of bushland.
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