The rescuers

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Jeremy Bear, Ryan Tate and Taylor

Koala rescue team

Thanks to his surname, Jeremy Bear from the NSW Central Coast (below, left) has always felt a connection with Australia’s eucalyptus-munching marsupials. (“Not that koalas are bears!” he hastens to remind people.) But it wasn’t until he took a redundancy from his engineering job in 2019 and began volunteering full-time with the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital (koalahospital.org.au) that he turned his passion for the unique animals into his life’s work.

During the recent devastating summer bushfires, Bear banded together with Ryan Tate of Tate Animal Training Enterprises and his specially trained English springer spaniel, Taylor, to scour burnt-out bushland around Port Macquarie and the Snowy Mountains in the state’s south for koalas that needed their help. Taylor was a critical member of the team, hunting down the scent of koala scat so the humans knew where to look.

“I remember the first koala who came in to the hospital – we called him Paul,” says Jeremy. “He had pretty severe burns around his bum and his hands and feet but luckily he’s still with us, unlike some of the others we lost along the way.” It’s always hard, he says, when a koala slips away or has to be put down but the joy of releasing the rehabilitated ones back into the wild makes it worth it. “They find a tree they like and bolt right up it. Sometimes they even give you a little look over their shoulder before they go.”