China's giant panda was brought back from the brink of extinction but can we save our iconic bear-like marsupial before it's too late?
When the koala was declared endangered on Australia's east coast last month, it was a shock to many.
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Here we have one of the nation's most beloved animals, one of its most recognisable overseas, one of the creatures so unique it helps Australians feel like this place is just a bit different to the rest of the world - on a path to extinction.
Its habits are just as unique - carrying its young in a pouch, looking cute and cuddly but vicious if provoked, and happiest on the nod after a big feed of eucalyptus leaves.
The roar of the breeding male has to be heard to be believed, a deep rumbling bellow that's assisted by what has been identified as an extra pair of vocal chords located in their throats.
The marsupial which is not a bear has been immortalised in Australian literature from Bunyip Bluegum in Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding to Dorothy Wall's Blinky Bill and Mem Fox's Koala Lou.
How can a national icon be endangered in 2022?
After the koala suffered a 50 per cent decline in population over 20 years as habitat was bulldozed for development, then the east coast was hit by a series of terrible fires, a slow-moving and vulnerable critter had nowhere to go.
But it remains to be seen whether the declaration by Commonwealth Environment Minister Sussan Ley is the wake-up call that actually forces a turnaround of its trajectory.
While Ms Ley's declaration may have surprised some in governments, it is not the action of a radical. Ms Ley is the same Environment Minister who successfully argued that governments don't owe a duty of care to future generations to protect them from the dangers of climate change.
For WWF campaigner Stuart Blanch, one of the people who had been pressuring the government to act, the endangered listing was a sad day but offered the chance to stop taking the koala for granted.
"It's a necessary terrible step," he said. I don't think we can save koalas from extinction without things like this to raise awareness and actually focus people's minds. We're not making this up: we are losing them.
"If laws and funding and new protected areas are going to count with anything with koalas, now the rubber hits the road."
The decline has, if it's possible, been both gradual and sudden.
"The bushfires and the drought in the five years leading up to 2019-20, were very visible," Dr Blanch said.
"But the [consultants] we commissioned, and others commissioned ... they all modelled a 50 per cent decline over the 20 years up to 2020, thereabouts.
"The fires tipped them over the precipice. It was very visible - you couldn't ignore it when you had burning koalas on the Channel 9 news ... it took it into everybody's living room, or iPads, but this had been going on for decades."
We have brought koalas to the brink before. More than 100 years ago koalas were shot for their pelts, with the death toll estimated in the millions (WWF says 8 million).
In more recent years it's been habitat destruction for development that has devastated the koala population. With housing comes roads, and roadkill. The sexually transmitted disease chlamydia has also raced through the koala population, with few communities untouched.
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Now, with severe bushfires becoming more frequent, and forecast to worsen, the effects of climate change on koala habitat will take the lead as the top threat.
In June 2020 a cross-party NSW parliamentary committee on planning and environment concluded that the situation was dire and the koala could be extinct before 2050.
The NSW Government has a goal to double the koala population in the state, but has not yet confirmed the Commonwealth endangered listing with its own. NSW still rates the koala as vulnerable but this is being considered by its own threatened species experts.
Koala management plans are in place in many parts of the state, but their status on rural or forestry land was watered down after the issue nearly split the NSW Coalition Government, a period some call "the koala wars".
Much of the koala habitat in NSW is outside national parks. Mapping commissioned by the WWF, which corresponds generally to the government's mapping, indicates a healthy "core" koala habitat in the area between Campbelltown and Wilton - the area earmarked for extensive housing development in the near future.
Among it is LendLease's 1700-home Figtree Hill development, in south west Sydney, in which was approved by Campbelltown City Council but challenged in the Land and Environment Court, where the Save Sydney's Koalas group lost its bid to overturn the consent. While the case was lost on other grounds, the judge found the council did not have to elevate the local koala plan of management over its development process.
In 10 years the koala has gone from no listing, to vulnerable, to endangered. With the "koala wars" receded and a new environment minister in place, but clear conflict between development and conservation, it remains to be seen what NSW does next.
Dr Blanch said there are few examples worldwide where an animal so iconic has been so threatened.
"I think it's our orangutan," he said. "Or perhaps the giant panda. There are some similarities to the panda - but after 30 years, the World Heritage listing for [their habitat], the creation of reserves, breeding and giant panda diplomacy, last year they got giant pandas off the endangered species list.
"It's like the giant panda or the orangutan - that's where koalas fit."