Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital receives a number
of koalas from the Fraser Coast region
and in the last 12 months we had two
from an area of high development at Booral.
One of them was hit by a car,
little Herbert, and he spent four months in care at the hospital.
He was very lucky to be alive.
He required a lot of stabilization, but he had no fractures.
So he was lucky. He was mainly internal injuries.
And the other one, Lemongrass, was from the same location
brought in with her mother a year before Herbert.
She was only a little baby on her mother's back,
and her mother was severely affected with chlamydial disease
and she had cataracts in both eyes,
so she was blind and needed to be euthanized.
So little lemongrass was sent to a wildlife carer.
It was apparent that neither Herbert nor Lemongrass
could be returned to where they were from because their habitat no longer existed.
So we made an application to the Department of Environment
to get permission to translocate them to a lovely property called Tandora.
It's it's like a little paradise for koalas.
Tandoora is a large cattle property
and it's 11,000 acres, so it's a large area
and it's sort of made up of open paddocks and areas of eucalypt forest .
Tandora was identified as a good spot for Herbert and lemongrass to go
because there was already an established research project going on there,
and we've already moved a number of koalas that have come through the wildlife hospital here
up to that site as part of that project.
It's very safe. There's, you know, wild dog control up there, there's no cars nearby.
And the owner himself is very conservation minded, so keeps a good close eye on the koalas.
One of the key reasons why Herbert and Lemongrass are going to be
very valuable koalas to that project is that they're bringing in new genetics.
So the tandora population has been started
from individual animals that have come through the hospital
that needed a place to go back and live, basically.
So a new colony of koalas has basically started on this property,
and it's really vital that we continue to add good genetic material
to that population so that they continue to thrive in the future.
The University of Queensland
has the monitoring project on Tandora, and as part of that koalas
that go there are fitted with radio tracking collars,
and they are monitored while they're on that property.
The collars that they're wearing are fitted specifically for each individual
and they have a special weak link in them, so that if they were ever to get caught
on anything, they would come off easily and not harm the koala.
The ear tags that the koalas have in their ears
are very much like a human earring with a front and a back.
Very lightweight, don't do any harm to the koalas whatsoever.
One of the really fancy things about the monitoring up there
is that we can actually see them remotely
and we can actually follow where the koalas are going in almost real time.
So that gives us a bit of peace of mind as to knowing what's going on
with those animals when we can't actually be there on site all the time.
I'm very confident that Herbert and Lemongrass are going to succeed
really well in this property and will be vital to the population,
and I'm looking forward to getting back to see them in a few weeks time.