A Koala and Young

Nov. 25, 2003 — Australia is killing off its koalas at the rate of 20,000 a year through land-clearing, warned more than 400 scientists in an appeal to the nation's political leaders Tuesday.

The much-loved arboreal marsupial, Australia's best known wildlife symbol after the kangaroo, is dependent for its survival on the leaves of native gum trees, which environmentalists said are being felled at an alarming rate.

An open letter to Prime Minister John Howard and Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, signed by more than 400 scientists from around Australia, called for a rapid solution to the issue of land-clearing in the eastern state.

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For every 100 hectares of native woodland cleared, about 2,000 birds, 15,000 reptiles and 500 native mammals die either immediately or soon afterwards, the letter said.

The Queensland government froze land-clearing permits in May pending agreement on a $150 million ($108 million U.S.) compensation plan that was still to be finalized.

"Most people think when you clear a plot of land, whether it's small or large, the animals simply move off it and go somewhere else," said Professor Hal Cogger, a biodiversity scientist at the Australian Museum.

"The vast majority don't. They die either on the spot or they die shortly afterwards."

Cogger said research in the Brigalow area, which covered 15 million hectares from central Queensland to the neighboring eastern state of New South Wales, revealed 100 million birds, animals and reptiles were killed every year by land-clearing.

"That includes things like 19,000 koalas a year just simply being killed by land-clearing," Cogger said.

Professor Hugh Possingham, director of the ecology center at the University of Queensland, said it was cheaper to compensate landowners for not clearing land than to have to restore it later.

He said that at present Australia was spending up to $2 billion a year on land restoration.

"At the moment the repair bill for Queensland is really quite small. But why destroy something if you are going to have to put it back," Possingham said.

"It costs roughly 100 times as much to re-vegetate an area than to compensate somebody to not clear it in the first place."

He said the open letter, entitled The Brigalow Declaration, meant there was no excuse for politicians to say they were unaware of the problem.

The letter said rapid and decisive action was needed on the issue to clear up uncertainty, particularly among landowners who had been left dangling on the question of compensation.