12/09/2026
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VICTORIAN KOALA REPORT RECENTLY RELEASED IS HIGHLY MISLEADING AND DEEPLY CONCERNING.
As a result of the Parliamentary efforts of the Animal Justice Party, the Victorian government was forced to release the long-awaited koala report – held up since June 2025 costing over $850,000.
The report contained some amazing assertions including an estimate of the koala population in Victoria amounting to 217,000 koalas – which inspired many to claim Victoria’s koala population had dropped by 50%.
In reality, the population is likely to be much lower.. and Koala Crisis means much much lower. A careful reading of the research demonstrates a very sick koala population with a total of 51,700 koalas estimated to be living in hardwood plantations in south west Victoria.
This number is more than six times higher than in neighbouring forest.
The reason why Koala Crisis believes the Victorian koala population estimate is much lower is because of the evidence of low genetic diversity, malocclusion, dental disease, chronic ill-health and substantial welfare mortality.
There’s no information on the mortality of koalas in the January/ February bushfires which were catastrophic. Jacinta Allan’s government made no attempt to establish how many koalas were lost.
This is NOT a biologically healthy or secure population.
37% of the koalas examined had dental disease, and it occurred across all life stages and all sampled regions except Mallacoota. Moreover, koalas euthanised on welfare grounds were more likely to have dental disease.
Budj Bim had the highest level of koalas examined with dental disease. As if these koalas haven't been through enough with bushfires, helicopter shooting of over 1000 koalas, drought, so much stress.
The Victorian Koala Management Strategy acknowledges many Victorian populations were rebuilt from very small island populations following historical declines.
This produced major genetic bottlenecks and restricted genetic diversity. Importantly, the strategy specifically identifies jaw malocclusion as one of the abnormalities associated with inbreeding/genetic bottlenecks in Victorian koalas.
If a koala can’t eat properly, the animal becomes emaciated and slowly dies of starvation.
Infectious diseases were widely detected.
The population estimate relies on “ visual koala detections at only 22% of sites” and acoustic detection accounts for 64%.
This estimate has to be taken with a grain of salt. Acoustics are a very poor tool for estimating koala populations.
Acoustics only pick up male bellows. The only good use of acoustic monitoring is to determine if male koalas are in the monitored area.
It provides no information on whether females are present, back young, age and size of any population.
What is VITALLY IMPORTANT is this statement in the report.
The male bellow acoustic detections were subsequently incorporated into an integrated model that was extrapolated across Victoria.
So there’s no valid estimate of Victorian koala population. Only the select areas which the report focused on. What does this mean?
It means that the Victorian koala population estimate is a fantasy, based on calculations in models with no ground surveys, drone identification, scats, dogs. Guess work based on more guess work.
Koala Crisis agrees with this finding from the report.
“Across seven geographically distinct regions koalas were found in a state of chronically poor health and welfare across all life stages suggesting that multiple individual, environmental and demographic stressors may be contributing to prolonged physiological stress within these populations.”
Bottom line ? Victorian koalas are slowly dying of neglect, diseases, starvation, bushfires, lack of any refuges, government and opposition refusal to protect these poor suffering koalas.
The Victorian Labor government provided a $2.5 million grant to koala conservation after the report was released.
What’s a koala worth in Victoria ?
The Victorian government grant equates to approximately $11.98 cents per koala.
