Zookeeper's Lounge

ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) -- Cute, cuddly and fast breeding, thousands of koalas are eating themselves out of a home on an Australian island. But authorities are refusing to heed conservationists' pleas to reduce the population, fearing a backlash from tourists and animal rights activists.

more info HERE

what makes me sad is that i fear that this overpopulation may be because of human interference. did humans destroy all the natural predators and thus allow koala populations to go unchecked? or perhaps humans put them on the island in the first place... ah yes there it is "first introduced 100 years ago"

so should we 'correct' the problem the way nature would? or do something we consider more "humane" and intervene?

we caused the problem and now we have to fix it, right?

I was taught as a child that I clean up the mess that I made. In this case yes humans most likely interfered somehow and we should lend a hand to help the koalas out and restore the natural ecosystem conditions. Remember, we are part of the ecosystem too and if it gets out of order, it will affect us as well.

Well, the officials will probably regret not culling the koalas when they start having problems with them starving all over the place... they may soon have a problem paralleling the Keibab plateau deer population... the population may stabilize (though maybe not), but it probably won't be pretty while it is doing so... best to cull the population of koalas or even try to get rid of them entirely from the island. Sure tourists and activists like the cute fuzzy koalas, but they won't be so cute when they're starving and/or diseased... having such a dense population can't be good for health...

The officials need to listen to the conservationists and do what's best for the species, not what is most popular. This doesn't bode well for me, as I might be one of those conservationists in the future...