Vanishing Koala

Australia's aborigines thought that koalas were reincarnations of their dead babies, never dreamed of harming them. A cuddly, button-nosed little creature with furry ears and an affectionate disposition, the koala--along with such other Australian curiosities as wombats, wallaroos, kookaburras and the duck-billed platypus --thrived until white men came. When Chile's supply of chinchilla began to run low, hunters and trappers swarmed out through the Australian bush, slaughtered koalas by tens of thousands, shipped their hides off to the U. S. to be made into cheap fur coats or women's bags, belts and shoes. After a time Australia declared a permanent closed season on koalas, but by then the little beast was almost extinct.

Though it looks like a live teddy bear, the koala belongs to Australia's primitive family of marsupials. The newborn koala is beetle-sized. It lives in its mother's pouch for eight months, clings to her back for some months thereafter (see cut). A full-grown koala is some 2 ft. long, weighs about 12 lb. It spends its life in the branches of eucalyptus trees, eats only eucalyptus leaves and of these only twelve varieties. A koala fed leaves from any other of Australia's some 400 varieties of eucalyptus tree will die. The koala drinks nothing, tries to chew if given liquid. A few koalas have been imported by U. S. and European zoos. They promptly died.

Nine years ago, when koalas had almost vanished from the Australian bush, a penniless 22-year-old Brisbane naturalist named Noel Burnet dedicated his life to saving the species from extinction. He started out with four koalas in his boardinghouse back yard, soon interested a philanthropist who rented him a 50-acre patch near Sydney for a shilling a year. He named it Koala Park, planted eucalyptus trees, built a koala hospital, developed a thriving colony which tourists came from far & wide to see. Naturalist Burnet did not grow rich on his tourist trade, had a perpetual struggle to keep himself and his delicate little animals alive.

In the U. S. last week arrived an issue of the Sydney Sunday Sun and Guardian with half a page devoted to pictures of the koala and a plaintive screed by Noel Burnet. "Few American visitors," wrote he, "would fail to give everything they possess to take back to the States a real live 'Teddy bear,' but, alas, that cannot be."

"What," moaned embittered Mr. Burnet, "is a grateful country doing to save the Native Bear with that 'plaintive face' which has so completely 'sold' Australia to the rest of the world? The answer is --NOTHING."

Sounding curiously like a Republican critic of WPA, Mr. Burnet continued: "I have begged on several occasions for a little relief labor for small works to im prove the conditions for Bears. . . . But gangs of men chipping up grass and weeds along roads all over the district is apparently far more important. . . ."

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