The past few weeks have been sobering for Friends of the Koala rescuers and carers. Several koalas have been lost as a result of car hits, dog attacks or because they are in the final stages of chronic disease. These have included Simone - a beautiful, healthy, breeding female who is known to have lived around the grounds of Southern Cross University for at least the last few years. Unfortunately she was hit by a car, not once but twice, which resulted in her death despite our best efforts to get her the treatment she needed. Her little pouch young joey also died several days later from injuries related to the original accident. One of the most distressing things is neither driver appeared to make any attempt to avoid hitting the koala.

We have had several cases such as this lately where koalas have been hit by cars where the driver either did little to avoid them and/or failed to stop after they had been hit. Daly is a koala who is a bit luckier. Some local residents saw him hit and scamper up a tree nearby despite suffering from obvious head trauma. A local maccadamia picker was organised to assist in rescuing him from the tree. Daly was lucky and only suffered minor injuries from the hit. He also has a mild case of conjunctivitis so is at present being treated for this. After a pre release assessment he should be able to go back to where he came from - hopefully a more road wise koala.

Disturbingly we have had several koalas come in from outlying rural areas with good habitat suffering from immune deficiency problems. These include areas around Urbenville and Kyogle. These cases reinforce a point that was put across at the recent Conference held in Lismore that while the conservation of habitat is critical for the survival of the koala in this area the issue of disease and its impact on koala numbers needs to seriously be looked at and taken into consideration when doing population modelling.

On a brighter note four of last years orphans have gone out to their pre release site. After seeing all the sick and injured koalas over the last few weeks it was an absolute joy to watch these four guys explore their new surroundings, jumping from branch to branch while they had a nibble of leaf on the way.

We have also released another girl with a radio collar on. Bonnie was rescued from a surburban garden with dogs barking at her. After a vet check a collar was fitted and she was released at the bottom of the University grounds. A spot close by to where she was captured but without the dogs so close. So far she has moved across into the grounds of Lismore High School and has since been seen there with a possible admirer. Bonnie is only young, around 2 years old, so it will be great to be able to follow her progress over the next couple of years.