Strewth... we’re the kuddliest KOALAS in the kingdom!
They’ve swapped Down Under their for a stately home to save with species from extinction. Now, the 21 hours’ sleep a day and all just grand eucalyptus they can eat, life’s
oH TO be a koala, snuggled in a tree, eating for three hours a day, sleeping for the other 21 and — apart from the occasional stretch, the odd yawn, a quick scratch of your fur or a wriggle of your soft, leathery nose — doing absolutely nothing.
It all looks so relaxing, so peaceful, so Zen — at least if this furry group of marsupials – Dennis, Maizie, Coorong and Violet — is anything to go by.
But not at all. Koala bears are the prima donnas of the animal kingdom. They are so demanding and delicate, both emotionally and physically, that the keepers of Europe’s first ever Southern Koalas at Longleat Animal and Safari Park go to extraordinary lengths to tend their myriad needs.
Everything must be just so. The trees in the new Koala Creek enclosure have been arranged to perfection (it took staff three attempts to get the angles of the sleeping nooks to the koalas’ taste).
Their favourite eucalyptus leaves are currently transported from Devon, though Longleat is growing its own. There are about 800 species of eucalyptus in the world, of which this lot will only touch 11.
The temperature of the indoor enclosure is kept at a steady 18-21c because koalas have no sweat glands and — despite coming from Australia — do not like extreme heat.
They are weighed and physically examined twice a week. And even their droppings — small, neat pellets that fall gently to the ground every few minutes as they snack and snooze — are counted, studied and weighed to check that their complex digestive system is working. (It takes a koala two weeks to digest food.)
‘Droppings should just be the right shape, like little rugby balls, the right colour and the right consistency,’ explains James Dennis, Longleat’s deputy koala keeper. ‘ Too short or too dry could indicate kidney issues or other health problems.’
It’s hard to imagine anyone in Britain knowing koalas better than 26-year-old James, who has dedicated the past year of his life to koala care.
He moved to Australia for six months to get to know his new charges before they made their 10,000-mile journey to Wiltshire last October as part of a pioneering conservation project with Cleland Wildlife Park in South Australia, aimed at ensuring the survival of the species. James spends pretty much every waking hour with the koalas, tending them and chatting to them. Even on a rare day off he pops by to photograph them and check everything’s OK.
‘It goes beyond love! I would do anything for them,’ he says. Which is a good thing, because koalas need a lot of love.
Despite never knowingly taxing themselves (in the wild a koala can live its entire life never moving from one eucalyptus tree), they’re prone to illnesses, including a kidney disorder and a virus that affects their immune system. A study has also revealed that 47 per cent suffer from koala chlamydia, which is often inherited.
In the wild in their native Australia, they’re also threatened by urbanisation, dingoes, bush fires, drought and heatstroke.
But despite all these problems, their appalling eyesight and teeny brains, koalas have been around for more than 25 million years.
There are two species — the Northern Koala, smaller with finer fur and endangered; and the bigger Southern Koala whose numbers have recovered after being hunted almost to extinction in the Sixties.
Both live up to about 15 years in captivity (compared with ten or so in the wild), nurse new-born ‘joeys’ in their pouches for the first six months and are such solitary animals that there’s no collective noun for them. Until this lot came to Longleat last year, there were just three Southern Koalas outside Australia — in Hong Kong and Japan.
The journey was two years in the planning, in which government licences had to be obtained and meetings held with Viscount Weymouth ( patron of the International Koala Centre of Excellence, which protects koalas in the wild).
Longleat’s facilities were inspected twice by officials from Cleland Wildlife Park to ensure they could cope with the koalas’ demands. ‘ Very few places can take Southern Koalas,’ says Cleland director Professor Chris Daniels.
‘You have to be at the top of
your game in animal husbandry. Koalas are incredibly difficult to move because they get easily stressed. And if they become stressed, they stop eating and with that goes their water intake.’
It took two full-time staff a year to prepare eight animals for the 47-hour journey. They trained the koalas to move in and out of travelling crates.
They simulated the plane’s movement by driving them around in crates in the back of pick-up trucks. Not knowing which type of aircraft they’d be travelling in, they even played recordings of all sorts of aircraft engines, so the koalas wouldn’t panic.
‘ Koalas have incredibly sensitive hearing, so they would know the difference between one plane and the next,’ says Chris.
Eventually, five koalas travelled by cargo jet, accompanied by a veterinary team and three keepers who chatted all the way to keep the animals calm.
Not that they needed to — the koalas ate and slept all the way here. On arrival on UK soil, a fleet of Land-Rovers drove them to Longleat to start their new life.
Five months on, they look happy and ready to meet human visitors when Koala Creek opens next week. TO me, they all look pretty much the same, sitting in trees on thick, furry, padded bottoms adapted for a life of sloth. But to keeper James, they couldn’t be more different.
He identifies them by the unique pink and black patterns inside their enormous nostrils and by their different personalities and peccadilloes.
Maizie, he says, is the cuddly one, Dennis is a bolshy teenager full of hormones, Violet is the ‘free spirit’ and Coorong is ‘stubborn’. And then there was Wilpena. ‘She was our best eater, our largest koala,’ says James, suddenly sad. But after six weeks at Longleat she had lost a kilogram (a sixth of her bodyweight) in just seven days. Despite 24-hour care, she suffered a kidney disorder.
‘ Everyone was here for her final moments,’ says James. ‘We all cried.’ It was just awful bad luck. Today, ahead of opening to the public, the keepers are planning koala birthday celebrations ( involving eucalyptus treats, naturally) and, hopefully, the pitter-patter of a teeny joey.
Because, aged two, Dennis is nearing breeding age and the females know it. They’ve been bellowing at him and flipping their furry ears to get his attention. In return, he’s been flaring his nostrils and looking moderately interested.
If he’s a bit reticent, it’s understandable. As Professor Chris Daniels says: ‘Koala love-making is a challenging business — a fairly aggressive activity, and the boy needs to be big and strong if he’s going to get his way . . .’
All of which, of course, involves far more effort than this very lazy animal is used to.