The New South Wales government rejected the advice of a specialist scientific panel before its failed attempt to reintroduce koalas into a forest in the state’s south, resulting in the deaths of more than half the animals.
Internal documents show most members of a committee advising the state Environment Department on plans to move endangered koalas as part of a recommended conservation strategy against moving the marsupials from the forest near Wollongong to the South East Forest National Park near Bega, a five-hour drive away.
The documents show that eight of the 13 koalas translocated in March died, one more than the government originally claimed when Guardian Australia revealed the deaths in July.
They died within a period of two months. Some were left in the forest for six weeks after the first deaths, which contradicts the government’s public statement that everyone was taken into care as soon as the first deaths were recorded.
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Autopsies, known as necropsies, conducted on seven koalas showed they were malnourished and emaciated, but most reports obtained by Guardian Australia did not establish a cause of death.
The koalas were translocated – or translocated – as part of a project aimed at reintroducing the species to an area where the species was previously “locally extinct”.
The documents, some of which were released to Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws and some of which were obtained by the NSW Greens after a parliamentary order, show that a panel of external scientists and department staff advising the Minnis government on scientific licensing for koala translocation recommended the Department of Environment recommend captive feeding. Experiments with koalas before their release near Bega.
Matthew Crowther, a professor of conservation ecology at the University of Sydney and a member of the committee, said independent experts on the committee believed the relocation plan was “particularly risky” because the koalas were being moved a long distance and management had not done enough to determine why they were not already living in the south-eastern forest.
He said the department evaluated tree species found in the Southeast, but committee members were concerned about the lack of screening for nutrient and toxin levels in the leaves.
“I suspect the nitrogen in the leaves wasn’t high enough and/or the toxins were too high,” Crowther said. “Koalas, they have a very strict diet… If the nitrogen is not high enough and the toxins are high, the koala can’t survive. It can’t get enough nutritional content.”
Department officials rejected the committee’s proposal to conduct a captive feeding trial on the grounds that there were “significant risks in containing koalas in enclosures, including adverse health outcomes associated with additional stress, the potential for injury, deterioration in body condition and a decline in fitness,” the documents show.
Environment NSW spokeswoman Sue Higgenson said the documents suggested the department was so determined to go ahead with the relocation that it led to a “reckless indifference to the welfare and fate of individual animals”. It said it had referred the deaths to the RSPCA for an investigation into possible animal cruelty.
“It is clear that independent expert advice has been sidelined,” Higgenson said. “Licenses [to move the koalas] Granted in the face of an identified risk of failure and death, the animals were left to die after the first koalas were found starving to death, after which what happened can only be described as a coordinated cover-up of the truth.
The documents show discrepancies between what the government told Guardian Australia when it first published its report on the issue in July, and what was discussed internally.
The Department of Environment initially said that three koalas died within two days last April, and that autopsies on two of the animals indicated that they likely died of septicemia, an infection of the bloodstream.
The administration said the remaining 10 animals were taken into care, but four others died. The remaining six healthy koalas have been returned to their original habitat in the Upper Nepean State Conservation Area, west of Wollongong.
At the time, a department spokesperson said the team working on the project was investigating a possible link between “koala blood poisoning and adverse weather conditions, with deaths occurring four to five days after heavy rain.”
But according to two department reports released in the document cache, the first sign of trouble in the southeastern forest was when a female koala was found on the ground suffering from dehydration with her ear tag stuck to her collar on April 2. It was processed and returned to its original habitat near Wollongong.
Over the next two days, two koalas were found dead in the southeastern forest. A third had to be euthanized. Department staff then captured the remaining nine koalas for health checks. Six of them lost weight and muscle mass and were transferred into care, but three females were deemed healthy and were released back to the Southeast and monitored.
Two of the group of six koalas in care died. Of the three who remained transported, one was noted “unusually low in a tree” in early May, was taken into care and was found dead in his enclosure nine days later. Another was found lying on the ground near death in late May, and died while being transported to a vet. The third was arrested five days later.
This koala and the four surviving koalas were eventually returned to their home in the Upper Nepean area. But the first female koala transported from the south-east on April 2 was found dead and decomposed during a welfare check, bringing the death toll to eight.
Autopsy reports for seven of the dead koalas showed signs of pneumonia or sepsis in two of the animals, but all of them were suffering from “emaciation,” “undernutrition,” or poor body condition.
Higgenson said she was particularly concerned by the necropsy report that showed one of the translocated female koalas was carrying a joey. The koala was found dead in the female’s pouch during a medical examination after the first koala died in April. The adult was released into the southeastern forest, but was one of the animals that later died.
Emails between ministry officials say the expert panel advising on whether the transfer should go ahead could not reach consensus, but the proposal was “largely unsupported,” documents show.
The committee made recommendations to address its concerns, including proposing a captive feeding trial before releasing koalas into the south-east, but these recommendations were “largely unaccepted” by the department.
Instead, the email chain showed that the ministry’s Scientific Licensing Unit approved the translocation because it was a priority to meet the goal of having eight koala translocation projects as part of the state’s conservation strategy for the species. “Uncertainty about survival is part of the project,” officials said, and the transportation team has given careful consideration to the habitat and built “checks and balances” into the project.
A Department of the Environment spokesman said the relocation project attempted to reestablish a once-healthy koala population in the south-east, and the team working on the project took into account advice from a “range of different experts”.
“In some cases, there was conflicting advice between the committee, vets and other experts,” the spokesman said. “A robust review is currently underway to examine all circumstances, including planning, advice, implementation, post-release monitoring and response.”
The review is expected to be completed by December, they said.