Koala Tracking Update

Winter 2006

With Sean hunting the central Queensland koalas and Bill chasing the island koalas, some really interesting information is coming together.

Both Bill and Sean will be heading to St Bees Island for the next trip, its time to see what the koalas are up to in the pre-breeding period. If you have Google Earth loaded on your machine and are using explorer, you can simply click on the links and the locations of the Blair Athol koalas listed below will appear. If you are using Mozilla, you will have to launch Google earth separately. If you do not have Google Earth installed on your machine you will need to install it to see the tracking maps.  Try the "F10" function to see the animals movements sequentially.

8235 (Christina) Click here 9327 (Knuckles) Click here  9317 (410)    Click here
 9336 (Buzz)    Click here 9346 (Inger)    Click here  

More Koalas on the mine site!

It has been very hot and dry at Blair Athol for several years, but this year several new koalas have been found on the mine site. Whether these koalas are local residents or transients is not known, however one mother has raised a young to independent stage, of similar age to koala "410" and her offspring. It is very interesting to find new koalas within such proximity to the noise of the mine, but these koalas seem unaffected.

So far 410's baby has not been caught, so it's sex is not known, but recently Buzz and 410 were found in adjacent trees, so it may not be long before the young koala becomes a totally separate entity!

 For more information on the project, its goals and progress, visit the Koala Venture website.

 

Night tracking goes to a new level on St Bees

The koalas of St Bees Island have been monitored for several years and some really interesting data on day and night use has been uncovered. It seems the koalas like to sit in the cool shady rainforest trees during the day and venture into the eucalypt woodlands for feeding at night.

We are now tracking the koalas regularly at night, but on the last trip the Earthwatch volunteers managed to collect all the animals you see on the photo (right) in under two hours!

 If you think you could be a champion tracker, why not have a look at the Earthwatch page and see if it is for you!

 

 

 

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