Koala

The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) is an arboreal marsupial native to eastern and southeastern Australia, where it lives almost entirely in eucalyptus forests and woodlands. It is one of the few mammals capable of surviving on a diet of eucalyptus leaves, which are toxic to most other animals and provide so little nutrition that koalas sleep up to 18 to 22 hours a day to conserve energy. Their gut bacteria are highly specialized to detoxify the compounds in the leaves, and individual koalas show strong preferences for particular eucalyptus species within their local range.

The IUCN Red List classifies the koala as Vulnerable, a status that reflects steep population declines driven by habitat clearing for agriculture and urban development, disease, vehicle strikes, and dog attacks. Chlamydia infection is widespread in many wild populations and causes blindness, infertility, and death in affected animals. The 2019 to 2020 bushfire season burned an estimated 24 percent of koala habitat in New South Wales alone, according to the WWF, killing or displacing large numbers of animals and compressing already fragmented populations into smaller, more isolated patches of forest.