Calls are mounting for an immediate halt to logging at one of Australia’s top tourism destinations after footage emerged of koalas falling to their deaths from treetops.
The shocking allegations were made by whistleblowers including animal welfare group Kangaroo Island Wildlife Network, which rescues and rehabilitates local wildlife on the South Australian island and was given several of the injured marsupials.
Hundreds of the animals are estimated to have died as a result of their injuries, group president Katie Welz said.
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Footage broadcast by 7NEWS showed koalas falling from the forest canopy as a result of logging.
“It blows my mind that it’s being allowed to happen,” Welz told Seven News.
“You can’t just kill animals because they’re inconvenient.”
The situation on Kangaroo Island has been labelled the “most significant animal welfare scandal in the nation’s recent history” and a potential tourism disaster by South Australia’s opposition leader.
“It has been a catastrophic thing to see as a former environment minister,” David Speirs said on Tuesday.
“To see the mismanagement of our precious wildlife is just heart-wrenching.”
Kangaroo Island was named the world’s number two must-see region by influential travel guide Lonely Planet in October and is a significant draw card for South Australia’s tourism industry, attracting more than 200,000 visitors per year.
Tourism took a massive hit when bushfires in 2019-20 torched almost half the island and killed as much as 80 per cent of its koala population.
Independent SA upper house MP Frank Pangallo called on the government to immediately suspend tree felling operations until a solution could be found.
“The situation is only going to get worse as those plantations are being cleared and will be returned to agricultural land, so these koalas are going to run out of trees to live in and feed off,” he said.
SA Environment Minister Susan Close said inspectors who attended the plantation site in May 2023 found “no evidence of koalas being injured as a result of wilful or negligent actions or breaches of the National Parks and Wildlife Act”.
In a later statement, Close said reports of koalas being injured and killed were distressing and she was deeply affected by the footage.
“Senior National Parks and Wildlife Service (staff) will visit the site this week to ensure contractors are working within animal welfare requirements,” she said.
Kangaroo Island mayor Michael Pengilly accused whistleblowers of “dramatising things” by overestimating the numbers of animals killed.
“As far as I saw, there was only one koala,” he told Adelaide radio station 5AA on Tuesday.
“They’ve got thermal imaging going, they’ve got spotters with binoculars looking at the trees ahead of where they’re cutting them down, and I was pretty impressed with what I saw, actually.”
Pengilly said it was in the interests of the island to remove the blue gums after they acted as an “incendiary device” during the devastating fires.
Koalas are not native to Kangaroo Island but were introduced during the early 20th century in a bid to safeguard the species’ dwindling population on the mainland and have since boomed, with many considering them a pest.
Pengilly said the population had exploded since the fires and was at risk of starvation because they had become overabundant.