Hey guys, I'm Dr. Ludo,
and today I'm standing in front of our brand new koala ICU,
which is state of the art, and I'd love to show you what's inside.
So how exciting is this, guys?
This is our brand new koala treatment area, so when we bring our koala
patients in, we can fully examine them under general anesthesia
using our brand new anesthetic machine here.
Once we have a treatment protocol for the koala, we can recover it
and bring it out into our amazing new enclosures just over here.
And the amazing thing about these enclosures
is that we can actually turn the temperature on
so that they stay nice and warm while they're recovering from their anesthesia.
So a couple of days after opening,
we received our very first five koala patients.
This little guy here is Salt, the koala joey,
and he's the very first patient
at our brand new koala ward.
Koalas require a lot of round the clock care.
And we're so happy that
now we have special state of the art facilities to help koalas
just like this guy. Now, being the first patient,
it's very exciting, but he has a pretty sad story.
Unfortunately, he and his mum were hit by a car.
His mum suffered some terrible neurological issues,
but they are pulling through
and he's getting better, and bigger, stronger every day.
And thanks to our incredible team, including Ludo, he is going to make
hopefully a perfect recovery and be back out in the wild shortly.
Good on you, mate.
Once the koalas have been stabilised in our enclosures on IV
fluids and pain relief
and any treatment that they may require, we've got these amazing wards over here
which come with
air conditioning and heat as the koala may require.
So these enclosures here are two larger enclosures,
which, if the koala requires sun time, they've got access to the outdoor area.
And if they require more air conditioning and temperature regulation,
they can remain in this area here.
But the fact that they've got access to sunlight will help them heal
and help them feel in a more natural environment,
which is what we strive to achieve the most here at the Australia Zoo
Wildlife Hospital, because in the end, we want all of our wildlife to be released
back out into the wild.
So providing them with the most
natural environment is really the best outcome for them.
We've got another one,
two, three, four enclosures here.
In here,
we've got Basil and Harry, who were two orphaned koalas that have come to us
for a week in this enclosure here where we can monitor them nice and closely.
And then after
they have had their time in here, they're going to go out to our plantation
enclosure, which is full of large trees where they can learn to climb
and be real koalas before being released back out into the wild.
This first enclosure actually serves
as a two-fold function
as a koala enclosure in this department here
and then through here, it can be used as a platypus enclosure.
So we've actually filled up that little water body area in there
and we put a ton of little insects because we currently have a platypus in care.
So once he's had his morning meal, he's going to come out here for a swim
and have a little bit of extra food to eat in there.
So this is one of my favourite enclosures and I can't wait to use it.
This is our hyperbaric chamber,
so this hyperbaric chamber was donated from an American company
and will serve to allow our patients to heal faster,
so it's been known to be used for neurological trauma,
for increasing the speed of recovery of wounds
and in humans it is actually used for when divers get the bends.
But seeing as our koalas won't be going diving anytime soon,
we won't be using it for that purpose.
But we're really excited to get going with this machine
because it is just fantastic.
Every year the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital sees 800 koalas, and this number
is increasing exponentially every single year due to habitat loss.
Having this facility couldn't have come at a better time
because it means that we can treat more koalas and more wildlife in general.
However, we need everybody out there to really try to save the koala
by doing simple things like planting some native shrubs and trees
in your backyard, slowing down on our roads during dawn and dusk
when our wildlife is the most active and most likely to get hit by a car,
and also protecting our old growth forests and the habitat
that our wildlife call home,
you will be making a huge, huge benefit to these amazing animals.