Great koala find at the Bioblitz

Chris Allen from NPWS led three teams to search for koala scat at the Mimosa Rocks Bioblitz. They had planned three surveys each on Friday and Saturday, but decided, in spite of finding nothing, to go out for a last look before the Bioblitz ended. Just before they finished their last transects, two of the teams found koala scat. This was very exciting for everyone, as until Saturday no koalas had been recorded as living on the east of the road near Gillards.

Someone had made a video of a male koala seen on the road several weeks ago, so these surveys were to try and find evidence of koalas living in this area.

As Chris said, "so often these surveys are influenced by the "Great Koala" in the sky", and they were priviledged to find this definitive evidence.

Chris has this message for his volunteers,

"The finding of koala pellets of varying ages at the last two sites of the survey makes an important contribution to knowledge of the distribution of the coastal forests koala population and will help its conservation. A big thankyou to every volunteer; each tree that was searched brought us one tree closer to the ones that had the pellets, they would not have been found without your help."

Deb Morgan, Toby Hulf, Roger Park, Mark Lems - one of the successful teams with their prize