Despite all of the noble rhetoric our governments, both state and federal, continue to utterly fail to protect the koala and other threatened species with the current biggest threats habitat destruction (read land clearing), stress and feral species.
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Australia, and NSW to our shame, are leading the world in species extinctions.
The failure of governments to do more than spruik noble sounding sentiments is not news however.
One hundred and twenty five years ago in 1898, koalas were first mandated to be a protected species.
Despite this they continued to be 'legally' killed for their skins for decades more to make koala bear toys, fur gloves and hats with 57,933 individual koala skins exported from Sydney in the one year, 1908, alone whilst in Queensland one million skins were exported in one six month period and another 600,000 koalas in one month August 1927.
Other years and months saw similar numbers.
Then, as now, Australian and state government laws and protection failed utterly to protect the koala with jobs and income being prioritised over extinction.
It was the then president of the Wildlife Preservation Society, David Stead (an original Australian tree-hugger), who stopped this wholesale slaughter by appealing directly to US President Hoover to ban the importation of koala skins.
