MANY years ago, my kids and I were camping in Mungo Brush. One night, we were woken to the eerie, unearthly grunt of a male koala, looking for mates, as he descended one tree and ascended another. We took a torch and spotted the koala.
In the morning I had to stop young boys throwing rocks and sticks at the poor koala in the tree. We have had a cavalier attitude to koalas. But suddenly, just like the Tasmanian Tiger before it, the last koala will die and the species will become extinct. The last Tasmanian Tiger died in a Hobart zoo in 1936. The last koala will probably also die in a zoo, despite zoologists' best efforts.
