koala

 

On the operating table, unconscious and nestled on a pillow, Joe Mangy appears deceptively peaceful. His watery, red-rimmed eyes are the only visible sign of the disease ravaging his body. Tubes protrude from a mask covering his face as a veterinary technician listens to his chest. Joe isn’t healing as well as the team had hoped.

Just eight days ago, the two-year-old koala was found wandering a suburban road, dazed and nearly blind from mucus gluing his eyes shut. He was rushed to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary’s hospital on Queensland’s Gold Coast, where the rainforest setting belies the grim reality faced by its koala patients.

Outside the clinic, in a eucalyptus-scented rehabilitation centre, a three-year-old female recovers from a life-saving hysterectomy that has rendered her sterile. Nearby, a male koala stares blankly through swollen, inflamed eyes. This hospital is ground zero for a devastating chlamydia epidemic that is killing thousands of koalas, rendering many sterile, and pushing the species toward extinction.

The crisis has spurred efforts to develop a vaccine, but after more than a decade, progress is hampered by regulations, limited funding, and time running out.

A Rapid Decline

Not long ago, spotting koalas in backyard trees was commonplace along Australia’s populous east coast. Today, however, their numbers have plummeted—by as much as 80% in some areas over the past decade. Land clearing and urbanisation have displaced them, while natural disasters like wildfires and floods kill them en masse.

“[But] it’s the chlamydia that shot up tremendously – almost exponentially,” says Dr Pyne, who has run the Currumbin clinic for more than 20 years.

“You get days where you’re euthanising heaps of koalas that just come in completely ravaged.”

Though koalas are difficult to count, some estimates suggest only 50,000 remain in the wild. The species is officially listed as endangered across much of its range, and there are fears it could vanish entirely from some states within a generation.

At Currumbin, head vet Michael Pyne recalls a time when his hospital treated only a handful of koalas each year. Now, they see over 400 annually. Many are victims of vehicle strikes, dog attacks, or chlamydia—the last of which is the most widespread and deadly.

The bacterial infection manifests as conjunctivitis in some koalas, causing blindness and starvation, while others suffer from painful urinary and genital infections. In severe cases, these issues overlap, creating agonising conditions that leave koalas unable to eat or pass urine without distress.

“Their reproductive system falls apart,” Dr Pyne explains.v

Treatment is possible if caught early, but antibiotics can destroy the gut bacteria essential for digesting eucalyptus leaves, the koala’s primary food source.

A Race for a Vaccine

Chlamydia’s spread among koalas is unparalleled. The disease, likely contracted from livestock, affects roughly half of koalas in Queensland and New South Wales. In some areas, like nearby Elanora, infection rates exceed 80%.

It is the most diseased population in the region and numbers have been “falling off a cliff”, Dr Pyne says. “It’s a disaster.”

In response, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has developed a vaccine nearly two decades in the making. Partnering with Currumbin, they are vaccinating wild Elanora koalas, tracking their health over three years. Early results are promising: only three vaccinated koalas have contracted the disease, all of whom recovered. Remarkably, over two dozen joeys have been born, defying the trend of infertility in infected populations.

“There’s generations of koalas now that have come through. We’ve got grand joeys,” Dr Pyne says excitedly.

Currumbin also vaccinates every koala admitted to its hospital, totalling about 400 so far. However, each vaccinated koala costs A$7,000 (£3,500, $4,500) to treat and monitor. Capturing and vaccinating wild koalas costs nearly double.

“No-one wants to imagine an Australia without koalas,” Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said at the time.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC) are trialing their own vaccine. Over the past decade, they’ve inoculated 2,000 koalas through wildlife hospitals and conservation projects. A recent study of 600 koalas showed a two-thirds drop in mortality among vaccinated individuals. Even when vaccinated koalas contracted chlamydia, they did so later in life, after reproducing.

“It turned it around completely.”

Challenges to Implementation

Despite these breakthroughs, regulatory hurdles and funding constraints slow progress. UniSC has submitted its vaccine for federal approval, but researchers remain cautious about the timeline. QUT faces similar obstacles, compounded by the logistical challenges of their two-dose vaccine, which requires an innovative implant to deliver a booster.

“There’ll be hurdles,” Dr Timms explains.

Funding remains precarious. While state and federal governments provide occasional grants—last year both teams received A$750,000—resources are unpredictable and insufficient. Both research groups rely on donors and universities to bridge the gaps.

“I cannot believe somebody will not come along tomorrow and say ‘You need to vaccinate? Here’s my cheque to cover the next 10 years’. But we can’t find them,” Dr Timms says.

Even if approved, rolling out a vaccine on a large scale presents formidable challenges. Capturing and vaccinating wild koalas is time-intensive and expensive.

“People come to us semi-regularly and say, ‘Can we vaccinate more koalas?’ And the answer at some point is ‘No’, because otherwise we’re just spending all our time and energy doing [that],” Dr Timms says.

Strategic targeting of high-risk populations may be necessary, though the exact number of koalas that need to be treated to reverse declines is unclear.

A Complex Crisis

Adding to the frustration is the realisation that a vaccine alone cannot save koalas. Habitat destruction, climate change, and human activity continue to pose significant threats.

“[It’s] a critical step that is just taking too long. It kills me,” Dr Pyne says.

“We’ve kind of passed it being urgent. It was urgent probably 10 years ago.”

For Joe Mangy and others who survive chlamydia, returning to the wild means facing a litany of dangers, from shrinking habitats to predation and road accidents. As researchers and conservationists fight to buy time with vaccines, the broader challenge of preserving koalas’ ecosystems looms large.

For now, Joe Mangy is a small victory in a much larger battle. As he recovers under the care of Currumbin’s dedicated team, his story underscores the urgency of saving not just individual koalas, but the species as a whole.

“It’s death by a thousand cuts, right?” Dr Timms says.

 

——————————————————————————

At Natural World Fund, we are passionate about rewilding the UK to stop the decline in our wildlife.

Donate now and join in the solution!

 

Leave A Comment