Koalas ‘Functionally Extinct’ After Australia Fires Destroy 80% of Their Habitat | Hacker News Reader

Koalas ‘Functionally Extinct’ After Australia Fires Destroy 80% of Their Habitat

forbes.com

53 pointshanniabu28 comments

"Following the initial declaration of 'functional extinction' in May, Christine Adams-Hosking, a conservationist at the University of Queensland, penned an article for The Conversation more accurately outlining the fate of the koala in Australia. In it, Adams-Hosking made it clear the functional extinction tag was one likely applied with a little too much haste. In a study conducted in 2016, a collaboration of researchers attempted to quantify how many koalas were left, but it's a complex game."

https://www.cnet.com/news/koalas-are-not-functionally-extinc...

forbes is shit, the headline is a lie.

https://www.cnet.com/news/koalas-are-not-functionally-extinc...

Not only Forbes, apparently.

https://twitter.com/JacquelynGill/status/1198437407475015682...

(from the parent's link)

I hate to be the person saying something like "koalas are only in terrible trouble, not awful trouble", because it's clear that the issues are serious (not to mention the over-arching issue of climate change). But in an article linked from this one there's this quote:

"The number given by the Australian Koala Foundation is much lower than the most recent academic estimates, but experts agree that koala numbers in many places are in steep decline."

So the line about "experts" in the Forbes article are the Australian Koala Foundation, not academics who study koalas.

As I say, I'm reluctant to bring this up because it may sound like I'm deliberately trying to diminish the importance of habitat destruction on koalas, which is clearly serious. But the headline for me feels like Forbes chose the most emotive possible interpretation to gain some clicks, rather than it being a sober analysis of the (clearly serious) situation, and therefore I'm doubtful of the "functionally extinct" part of this.

The reason I'm quibbling is that if this claim is over-stated, it's going to lead to people thinking "well, last time they said functionally extinct it wasn't true, so it probably is this time," and will make these kinds of claims easier to dismiss in the future.

It's also worth noticing that the author of the Forbes thing is a "Forbes contributor" i.e. a person using the Forbes blogging platform, not a Forbes journalist. Serious topics deserve better journalism than this article.

Although 1000 koalas are believed to have been killed in these recent fires (from the article), it doesn't look like they are "functionally extinct" [1]. Also, it seems like that particular claim was made earlier the year as well (before the presumed most recent fires). I don't know what to say about the "80% of their habitat" claim.

In any case, as many have lamented before me, it's a pity that we keep wanting poster boy animals rather than just general, sanitory debate around nature conservation.

[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2203655-no-koalas-are-n...

> we keep wanting poster boy animals rather than just general, sanitory debate around nature conservation.

Same here, but I also can't disagree because if we don't get the population a little enraged and hyped up about it then there will be no pressure on the politicians. At least this is the case in the US where oil/gas/mining lobbyists continue to have protected lands changed to unprotected so they can rape and desecrate it for profits.

> if we don't get the population a little enraged and hyped up

I disagree - people just become numb and tune it all out. Plus, the opposite side then just point out the exaggerations to their own benefit.

Bingo, outsize panic serves politicians, but rarely serves causes in the long run.

There will come a time when we can only view the most interesting wildlife that was common a hundred years ago only in pictures and movies. Super sad. As a kid I had an encyclopedia of all the animals, not a kids book but a pretty serious book with a page per species. I wonder how many of those that were still around back then (1975) are gone today. Probably not a happy answer to that question.

Koala's still stand a chance of survival if humanity wishes it to be so.

I’m not sure about that; they’d probably just be extinct in the wild and confined to shelters and zoos.

Koalas have never been super common. And are a really shitty animal.

Their preferred food, eucalyptus, is low in calories and high in toxicity. Koalas have almost no brain folds and are really, really dumb.

They can’t recognise leaves if they aren’t on a tree. People love them because they are cute loving teddy bears, but they don’t have a strong evolutionary niche.

Was it, perchance, the Larousse? I loved that book.

Interesting, never thought of looking it up, this was the book:

https://www.boekwinkeltjes.nl/b/103530821/De-grote-encyclope...

For sale on the local ebay equivalent for 1,50 euros... a steal at that price:

https://www.marktplaats.nl/a/boeken/dieren-en-huisdieren/m14...

The ad has some of the contents in it, most of the images were b&w with only very few pages in color. Still, I loved that book and tried real hard to learn it by heart.

Similar in scale and tone to the Larousse, certainly. Every kid should have one in their life.

Real time interesting wildlife: https://www.elephantseal.org/view.htm

Worth the drive when visiting the Bay Area. They’re about the size and weight of an F150.

Doubly tough that the eucalyptus tree is an excellent fuel source for wildfires (hence there's been an extensive removal program by northern California municipalities over the last decade)

That's interesting, is it because the sap acts as a flammable gel?

A eucalyptus tree is virtually a bomb:

- as with most trees, the wood alone is enough to sustain a long, hot burn

- the oil means it catches considerably easier than most trees

- it's one of the trees that frequently drops dead leaves and branches, and the oil means that fungi growth i.e. decomposition of these is inhibited, so they tend to be surrounded by kindling

- the oil near the top of the tree can actually aerosolize under summer temperatures; when this catches it can create literal firestorms across the canopy

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus#Adaptation_to_fire:

"Eucalyptus oil is highly flammable; ignited trees have been known to explode. Bushfires can travel easily through the oil-rich air of the tree crowns...

...In seasonally dry climates oaks are often fire-resistant, particularly in open grasslands, as a grass fire is insufficient to ignite the scattered trees. In contrast, a eucalyptus forest tends to promote fire because of the volatile and highly combustible oils produced by the leaves, as well as the production of large amounts of litter high in phenolics, preventing its breakdown by fungi and thus accumulating as large amounts of dry, combustible fuel."

So yes, part of it is that it secretes oils that are highly flammable. Another part is that it tends to accumulate dead leaves etc at the base, which aren't broken down as fast as that of most trees.

The Eucalyptus has evolved to expect periodic fires - it's flammable because stoking fires is adventageous to it. The problem is that now, due to climate change, the fires are more frequent and more intense, and because habitats are so small, there's nowhere else for the koalas to go when one part of the forest burns.

This is really sad to hear. I hope that we're capable of restoring their habitat to a reasonable extent, and that the natural population subsequently rises up again.

I thought koalas were a borderline nuisance species...far more than 1000 koalas in Australia. Maybe less than 1000 outside Australia. Not sure how accurate this headline/story is.

There seems to be some confusion between a population becoming extinct and a whole species becoming extinct. More information here. [1]

[1] https://theconversation.com/a-report-claims-koalas-are-funct...

Or perhaps the title of this article is intentionally ambiguous to make people click.

> Functional extinction is when a population becomes so limited that they no longer play a significant role in their ecosystem and the population becomes no longer viable. While some individuals could produce, the limited number of koalas makes the long-term viability of the species unlikely and highly susceptible to disease.

Restating the text is unhelpful and is an uncharacteristically thoughtless HN post. My lack of context was a missing distinction of the population boundaries. The population, when talking about extinction, is ubiquitously within the entirety of the species' home...not just some random patch. The headline is clickbait and the article is misleading, at best.

Koala's have very low numbers. You're probably thinking of Kangaroos, which are a nuisance species.

As per wikipedia:

> Since the 1990s, government agencies have tried to control their numbers by culling, but public and international outcry has forced the use of translocation and sterilisation, instead.[165]

Maybe nuisance is the wrong word, until you look at the Chlamydiaceae bacteria infection rates. You generally don't want to touch wild ones.

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