The world’s first “Koala Doggy Door” – a contraption that allows koalas to travel to breeding spots without doubling back into traffic—could save the lives of hundreds of Koalas tragically lost on Queensland and New South Wales roads every year.
Known as the ‘Fauna Escape Hatch,’ it allows koalas a one-way passage and prevents them from returning across roads – with the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads and Moreton Bay City Council working with the hatches inventors, Endeavour Veterinary Ecology (EVE).
According to Deidre de Villiers, EVE’s scientific manager, current methods of keeping the at-risk marsupials safe from incoming traffic were not fully effective. More than 300 koalas are victims of road deaths every year despite the erection of “less than effective” bridge and tunnel crossings.
“We were finding koala tags that were ripped off as they squeeze under the chain wire fences on the sides of highways,” Dr de Villiers said. “They like to push under things, so we found that by having these [hatches] on ground level, it’s natural behaviour for them to quickly slip underneath it.”
So far, 16 hatches have been deployed across the Moreton Bay City Council area, with Mayor Peter Flannery stating that video footage showed koalas successfully using the doggy doors.
“In one circumstance, a koala tried five times to get back through it on the road corridor, so he must have been looking for a mate on that road corridor who was appealing to him,” Mayor Flannery said. “It stopped him going out and getting involved in a collision with a vehicle, so it’s proven its worth in that one instance.”
The Koala breeding season runs from July to December, and Michael Hornby, EVE’s CEO, is hopeful the trial could be expanded state-wide and nationwide:
“Now we’re looking to release this not only around south-east Queensland but potentially nationwide,” Mr Hornby told ABC News last week. “The faster we can get animals off rail and road corridors, the less risk it will be for animals and motorists.”
CSIRO estimates that there are up to 630,000 koalas in forests
Australia’s koala population – listed as “Endangered” in Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT since 2022 – is far larger than estimated, thanks to groundbreaking data released by Australia’s peak science bureau.
Published as part of the CSIRO’s National Koala Monitoring Programme (NKMP), which has, since 2023, used expert data rather than expert opinion to calculate Koala abundance and disturbance.
And the results are surprising, with the CSIRO estimating the current population range between 287,830 and 628,010, about ten times more than the numbers forecast after the Australian Black Summer bushfires.
Whilst solely data-driven estimates have challenges—namely limited and fragmented data—the CSIRO states that they “have two distinct advances” over past estimates: “The first of these was a concerted effort to collate koala presence, absence, and abundance data from a wide range of sources (individuals, research organisations, community groups, local governments, and state governments). The second “is an analytical framework combining all these disparate sources and data types.”
- To learn more about the National Koala Monitoring Programme and current 2024 population levels, visit the CSIRO website.
