Geoff Helisma |
Depending on where you source your figures, there are fewer than 40,000 or up to 100,000 koalas remaining in Australia.
The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act says Australia’s most at-risk populations of koalas are in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.
Listed as “vulnerable”, they are protected under national environment law.
However, despite these ‘laws’, deforestation is threatening populations in NSW: the repeal of the Native Vegetation Act, the introduction of the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2017 and amendments to the Local Land Services Act resulted in the bulldozing of 5,000 hectares of koala habitat in 12 months, according to a recent World Wild Life Foundation report.
Meanwhile, Peter Steele, founder of World Wildlife Sanctuaries (WWS), is on a mission to “save koalas from extinction”.
One of his objectives is the creation of sanctuaries – towards this end, he is establishing a 166 hectare sanctuary at Kyogle, the first, he hopes, of many more.
Mr Steele and his corporate sponsor, Spar Australia, have joined together to facilitate Kilograms for Koalas events, where people can set a world record that is ratified by the Charity Challenges World Record Council.
Participants lift two four kilogram weights 50 times – full or half press –as fast as they can.
“Every 100 competitors lift an aggregate of 40,000 kilograms – one kg for every koala living in the wild in Australia,” Mr Steele said.
“It’s a world record challenge and achieves getting people involved all over the place; people are even doing it in England – so it gets the message, the awareness out, as far as the plight of the koala is concerned.
“Competitors pay a $10 entry fee to participate, which enables WWS to raise funds to help buy land on which to establish safe permanent sanctuaries.
“Today, Bob Little [Spar Maclean owner] and nine of his staff participated in the half press world championship challenge.
“In doing so, they established 10 Individual world records and three team world records.
“The male and female teams also competed as a mixed team of 10 competitors … and their world championship time was eight minutes 39.4 seconds.
“The challenge raised $239; Bob generously sponsored the 10 competitors from Spar, for a total of $200, and James Seymour raised an additional $39 by selling raffle tickets in a WWS raffle.”
As a part of the campaign, Mr Steele, 82, will soon set off on an attempt to “become the oldest person to sail around the world, solo, non-stop and unassisted … to save koalas from extinction”.
To have a crack at being a world record holder, send Peter Steele an email: peter@wws.io or go to the Charity Challenge World Record Council website: www.ccwrc.io.
