You Yangs koalas could be at risk from increasing visitor numbers after international flights arrive at Avalon Airport in December, a tourism operator has warned.
Echidna Walkabout’s Roger Smith called for a wildlife conservation zone on the eastern side of the ranges to protect both koalas and tourism dollars.
“Each koala in the You Yangs is worth $20,000 at least to the local community,” he said.
Parks Victoria would have to carefully manage the precinct after 1200 international travellers a day bolster already increasing visitor numbers, Mr Smith said.
“At the moment it’s just out of control.
“There’s not a day our guides don’t come back saying, ’We can’t find a place for a picnic or we can’t find a car park’.”
From 2014 to 2015 Parks Victoria vehicle sensors detected a 140 per cent increase in You Yangs visitors, from 162,000 to 388,000, Mr Smith said.
Numbers had risen at similar rates each year since due to increased urbanisation in greater Geelong, Wyndham Vale and Werribee, he added.
“There’s a good chance in over a year or so there is going to be a million people coming to the You Yangs.”
Mr Smith described You Yangs infrastructure as “terrible” and well below what “international travellers would expect”.
“The roads are falling apart,” he said.
“The toilets are barely coping.”
He also reported seeing cars narrowly miss hitting koalas.
A wildlife conservation zone would improve koala protection through signage, carefully-managed visitation, watering holes, stricter dog controls and improved tourist facilities, Mr Smith said.
But already local farmers and volunteers were working to increase habitats, Mr Smith’s partner and koala expert Janine Duffy said.
Ms Duffy is president of Koala Clancy Foundation, which has planted about 5000 trees around the You Yangs.
“It only takes five years for a river red gum tree to grow big enough to hold a koala,” she said.
The foundation’s volunteers also monitored koala populations and removed boneseed weed, which degraded the marsupial’s habitat, Ms Duffy said.
She urged anyone wanting to help to register at treesandkoalasevent.eventbrite.com.au for a free information session at Little River on 15 November.
