'It's quite a rare sighting': Where can you find Ballarat's remaining koalas?

The Moorabool Catchment Landcare Group [MCLG] have been searching areas from the Enfield State Park and Brisbane Ranges up to the Wombat State Forest, as part of the CSIRO's National Koala Monitoring Program [NKMP].

The NKMP aims to provide a greater understanding of koala populations and trends across the country, by working with Landcare groups, First Nations people, private landholders and citizen scientists to monitor numbers.

MCLG landcare coordinator Jackson Cass told The Courier while searching the 39 CSIRO designated sites, the group had found just three koalas in 2023 and two in 2024 when re-inspecting the same locations.

He said the total was "not a lot", but was also not representative of the entire population near Ballarat, as other groups were responsible for searching different areas, such as the Woowookarung Regional Park.

"I definitely would have liked to have found more, [but] I expected it to probably sit within that range," Mr Cass said.

"It matches up with what people have been saying anecdotally, at least over the last 30 years.

"If you talk to a lot of people that have been around for a lot longer than I have, they used to see koalas everywhere, and now it's quite a rare sighting through a lot of these areas."

Friends of Canadian Corridor [FoCC] secretary Jeff Rootes, who has been leading a citizen science koala spotting program in Ballarat since 2018, said koala sightings in the city were a lot more regular in the 1980s and 1990s.

This was after thousands of koalas were relocated from French Island, to sites across the state, to revive populations which had been hunted to near-extinction in the late 19th and early 20th century.

But, Mr Rootes said while the group doesn't record a lot of sightings, there are regular locations where they find koalas.

"In the last few years, it [koala populations] appears to be, at the moment stable," he said.

"We are spotting koalas with joeys and that's actually heartening for the future."

Mr Rootes believes Ballarat's koala population is the healthiest it has been in a long-time, owing to revegetation works in areas such as the Woowookarung Regional Park.

"Union Jack Education Reserve down near Buninyong has quite clearly got a koala population," he said.

"One of our observers, on one day, spotted four different koalas in Union Jack Reserve, we've not had a result like that in years."

In addition to Union Jack Reserve, Mr Rootes said other locations with regular koala sightings included Timber Top Estate on Green Hill Road, bushland north of Green Hill Road, and areas east of Mount Clear College and Pax Hill Scout Camp.

While the FoCC has recorded regular sightings of these koalas, Mr Rootes said it was difficult to put an exact number on Ballarat's koala population, as spotting the animals can be like finding a needle in a haystack.

To determine a population estimate, Mr Cass said the CSIRO would combine the MCLG data with other local sources, which would be put into an algorithm to determine a population estimate.

While koalas are listed as endangered in Queensland and New South Wales, they are not considered threatened in Victoria or South Australia.

Using data collected in the past two years, the NKMP estimated there were somewhere between 129,000 and 286,000 koalas combined across South Australia and Victoria.

This is considerably less than the state's estimated koala population of 459,865, which is provided by the Victorian Department of Energy Environment and Climate Action on its website.

This discrepancy could be explained by what Mr Cass called a "lack of data" on koala populations in Victoria.

"We don't actually have a lot of data on koala populations, and there's certain areas such as the south west where there's actually an abundance of koalas," he said.

"The aim of the NKMP is to deliver a more accurate and robust population estimate for koalas across the entire region, but also trying to build that long lasting capability to monitor trends in koala populations."

While Mr Cass's main focus is on monitoring trends in population, he said after spending the past 15 months searching bushland, more help for Ballarat's wildlife is something which is needed.

"We would like to see greater investment in monitoring and also habitat protection of koalas," he said.

This view is echoed by Ballarat wildlife rescuer Jessica Robertson, who described the change in the area's koala numbers as "alarming".

She said she would like to see the Victorian government take greater action on protecting koalas, and is particularly critical of its decision to not relocate a group of koalas living in a Gordon blue gum plantation, which was harvested in December 2023 and led to the death of several animals on the Western Highway.

"We've had 11 die on the freeway near the plantation, we pretty much think they're all gone," she said.

"They [the government] could have translocated them to a safe habitat five kilometres away and they didn't do it, and they all died, it's a terrible case study for how broken things are."

In January 2024, following the deaths of several koalas on the Western Highway in Gordon, the Conservation Regulator declined to comment to The Courier's questions but noted there was no evidence to suggest the deaths were linked to the blue gum plantation.

Ms Robertson disputes this, and wants to see the government change its policy before the species becomes critically endangered or extinct in the area.

"We all know koalas can't survive without trees, so why was it never considered in their [the conservation regulator's] framework," she said.

"Every decision they have made has caused more deaths, they decided to leave a buffer along the freeway ... and eventually they had to move."

For those interested in volunteering in the National Koala Monitoring Program, MCLG can be contacted via email at moorabool.landcare@gmail.com