It’s dark, you’re on a country road. A fragment of what was once, dense bushland. Suddenly you notice something in front of your car. It comes out of nowhere. Maybe you were going faster than you should have. Maybe you weren’t. You swerve and brake. You feel the sickening thud as the edge of your wheel clips something live. You see it propelled to the side. You’ve hit a koala. Car strikes are one of the biggest risks to koala populations, and you’ve just added to the stats.
You stop the car. The lights are still on, so you can see the koala is not dead. But it’s hurt. You feel sick. And panicked. What do you do? You have no reception to call a wildlife organisation. You’re alone on a dark road with a koala whose life you have almost ended. You can’t just leave it. This is an endangered species. You have a towel in the car and there’s an empty box. You meant to take it out of the car but now you’re glad you didn’t. You manage to wrap the animal in the towel and place it gently in the box. All the time your heart is beating out of your chest. The koala is making a low noise, it’s scared but it’s in shock. Now you have an injured koala in your car. You can’t go home.
You drive into reception, and you call the Byron Wildlife Hospital. They ask you to bring it in. You are greeted by a young woman – a wildlife vet. She takes the box from you, and the recovery journey for this koala begins. You drive home, very slowly this time and burst into tears.
This scene plays out every day on roads all around our region. It may not be a koala. It could be a magpie, or a possum, or a wallaby. But as habitat is destroyed by overdevelopment, as roads wind through what’s left of our corridors and as short-sighted governments continue to log native forests, our wildlife pays the price.
Australia has some of the world’s most diverse wildlife. Among approximately 2.16 million described animal species from a total world population of 8.7 million. We have an estimated total animal species of 570,000. We also have the highest rate of mammal extinction in the world. Last year alone, 144 animals, plants and ecological communities were added to the national list of threatened species. Five times more than the yearly average.
The black summer bushfires killed or displaced three billion native animals. And since 2000 we have cleared millions of hectares of critical habitat. There is a systematic failure by policy makers to stop the attrition. It’s why tens of thousands of people gathered around the country yesterday as part of the Bob Brown Foundation movement to end native forest logging.
One thing we forget to consider in this, is the mental health of our vets and volunteers who do the government’s work, looking after sick and injured animals. They are the people at the coalface of policy failure. They are constantly exposed to the trauma and suffering of animals and in a report tabled to NSW parliament this year it showed that the suicide rate for vets was four times the national average.
Since it opened, the Byron Wildlife Hospital has treated over 8,000 sick, injured and orphaned animals and wildlife. They do this without recurrent government funding. Until the government accepts the recommendations made by independent Senate inquiries and reviews of the Conservation Act, the Byron Wildlife Hospital has to ask for donations, sponsorship, sell merchandise, apply for grants, and run fundraisers like WildAid to raise all the funds it needs to operate.
It’s such a vital cause, that’s why I’m joining Jimeoin, Lehmo and Madeleine West to donate my time to perform at Wild Aid 2024 – Stand Up #ForTheWildlife. Hell, I’m even donating myself to have a Banya bathhouse experience with two bidders at the live auction on the night.
We shouldn’t have to do this, but if the government won’t do it, then the community will always come to the rescue.
Stop logging native forests. And fund the frontline workers in our biodiversity crisis!
Tickets are selling fast – so jump on now moshtix.com.au/v2/event/wild-aid-2024-standupforthewildlife/172082
Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox column has appeared in The Echo for almost 23 years. The personal and the political often meet here; she’s also been the Greens federal candidate since before the last federal election. The Echo’s coverage of political issues will remain as comprehensive and fair as it has ever been, outside this opinion column which, as always, contains Mandy’s personal opinions only.
Great cause I’ll grant you. But should we rename this column:”Mandy’s gig guide”?
The biggest threat to our precious wildlife will be the last section of the rail trail if it’s built. The predicted use of the rail trail will result in extra motor vehicle movements as support vehicles, fetching and carrying cyclists and their supplies, on our already inadequate road network, many of them from out of town and not used to unexpected wildlife sharing these carriageways . How sustainable is the rail trail if it relies on increasing the reliance of the motor vehicle?
Stewart, if you listen on the right day to the anti trail lobby you’ll learn that the trail will hardly be used!
The problem is the over population of the region. We were never heavily populated. We grew up in a beautiful sustainable, unpopulated productive, affordable region until city people came to change all that for their own agendas who never integrated into the local communities and created a monster that is now creating havoc on our wildlife. Well done greedy councils, people and real estates. We need to stop the over population of the area now. You are going to kill everything and it is going to be the place you all came from. Stop it please because no one out there cares everyone is so unaware of the area we live in and don’t care. A koala has no hope in hell of surviving constant traffic doing 80- 100 km on roads that barely saw a few cars a day. Our country roads were never used the way you all use them. People didn’t go to town all the time backwards and forwards all over the place time 25000! You would be lucky to see two to three cars on the coast road between Ballina and Lennox or Byron. Think about it. That road was never meant to be used as a main thoroughfare. This region is so sensitive in its rivers valleys and wildlife it was never meant to be over developed. Please stop because you are ruining everything. Our local ancestors never treated this place in such a way. They were productive and gave to it and not from it. Every one here now are greedy not from here not of here. Its all investment to them and fancy lifestyles not of here. This is not the North Coast. The wild life will tell you that. They have had enough too.
Hi Maria, Ur dead right, same in my area of Cent. West NSW. We need Sust. Pop. party; the Greens don’t have a Population Policy.
This is not about some stupid trail because you want the rail. This is about our now overpopulated region at the cost to our wild life and once sustainable affordable region. Wildlife does not have a chance now. All you city folk who have come here want something happening all the time and you weren’t content with our quiet country way of living. People use to say ‘ what do you do here, there’s nothing to do here’. I use to say are you kidding! Its a playground out there we don’t need 5 hundred cafes and restaurants. City folk didn’t want to come here because we were too country! So they started making it very busy in and around Byron. Bangalow is not Bangalow any more its more like Double Bay moved to the North Coast. Its disgusting all the time. So you all got your trendy over populated country towns and your busy social agendas so you don’t get board and can be seen and heard. All at the cost of our wildlife and our peaceful towns and way of living. So you all can busy our country roads and smother and consume our towns till they smell of garbage and there is no wildlife safe anymore. You do not understand this area. We are country we are not the city nor should we be made that way because ecologically and environmentally it is killing the place it can’t sustain any of it. Stop breaking what was beautiful and unbroken. Stop killing our wildlife. I’ve seen people driving over echidna s and spitting them out of the back of their vehicle. It bouncing on the road like a football and them not giving it a second thought. Me stopping on hairpin bends with traffic coming each way to quickly scoop it off the road in a shopping bag. I took it to a carer and the next day the vet calls me and said sorry we had to put it down as its beak was broken and it won’t be able to feed itself. All the self absorbed fake hippies, hipster bohemian cowboys and cowgirls who don’t know the country with it staring them in the face who have come here because they think its where the beautiful people live. You will never know the authentic North Coast and so terribly sad to see what is becoming of it. Old locals never treated it like this.
Well Written Maria
Sad but true
How do you solve the problem, Maria?