This picture highlights the bleak future for koalas, which face the escalating threat of extinction in New South Wales thanks to record levels of landclearing.
Taken recently in Monaltrie in the state’s northeast, it shows four koalas clinging to an almost bare tree, starving and with no suitable habitat to shelter within.
The area is at the epicentre of mass clearing, which has expanded since the State Government removed forestation safeguards in 2017, with 14 hectares of koala habitat bulldozed every day on average last year.
“Rates of bulldozing of native bushland have almost tripled in just one year in this area,” WWF-Australia said in a damning report.

It’s the equivalent of 14 football fields of habitat torn down every single day and the country’s eastern coast is now one of the world’s worst deforestation regions.
Koalas through much of NSW struggle to find enough food and adequate protection — particularly during the current heatwave, the organisation said.
WWF-Australia conservationist Dr Stuart Blanch said at current rates, koalas will be extinct in the state as early as 2050. “Koalas will disappear from NSW unless the state increases legal protections of mature forests and woodlands,” Dr Blanch said. A local community group in Monaltrie, Friends of the Koala, is working with Landcare to encourage landholders to replace exotic weeds with trees for the iconic marsupial. The project’s co-ordinator Julie Reid said the photo shows how important habitat restoration is, to ensure koala plantings are planned to provide connectivity and create ‘koala corridors’. “Planting the right trees reduces the need for koalas to cross roads and open paddocks in search of food,” Ms Reid said.



“The planted trees are being browsed before they are able to take the weight of the koala. This shows how desperate koalas are for food.” Australia’s iconic koala is at risk as its habitat comes under increasing threat from human development. But the koalas also create problems of their own: Many will eat only certain species of eucalyptus, limiting their food intake. Now, a new study suggests why the koalas are such picky eaters—it’s their gut bacteria, Nature reports. After collecting feces from 200 koalas at 20 sites, scientists found that koalas with different eucalyptus preferences harbored different gut bacteria. Researchers then transferred fecal bacteria from one group to the other. Within about 2 weeks, the koalas could eat the strain of eucalyptus they were unable to digest before, researchers reported at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. The finding could help save the koala—and other species with limited food supplies.