By LUKE VOOGT
Australia’s leading koala group is getting behind a plan to make Lara a tourism centre for the cuddly marsupials.
Australian Koala Foundation CEO Deborah Tabart praised a plan put forward by tourism operators to rejuvenate the local koala population.
“We’re 100 per cent behind anything that can help koala populations recover,” she said.
At a community meeting earlier this year, local tourism operator Janine Duffy unveiled a plan to increase Lara’s koala population.
The plan called for property owners near the You Yangs to plant trees on their lands.
However Ms Tabart warned the project would require careful planning, and it could take decades for positive results.
“You could do a hell of a lot of work and not achieve anything,” she said.
For the project to succeed, she said, it would have to take into account the factors which have reduced Lara’s koala population to about 100.
“Certainly Lara has got a lot of major roads around it. And vegetation is quite poor.”
Ms Tabart said she had witnessed “failed projects” to rejuvenate koala populations in the Otways.
One major problem, she said, had been the mass planting of one type of tree, whereas koalas require a number of different trees for their nutritional needs.
“I suspect this will be the same in the You Yangs,” she said.
“I’ve been in my job for 28 years and I’ve seen a lot of wasted resources.”
Ms Tabart encouraged the people behind the plan to contact her foundation’s scientists.
“We would be happy to give our advice,” she said.
