Bringing Blue Mountains Koalas Back From the Black Summer Fires

When the Gospers Mountain megafire threatened the Blue Mountains during Australia's 2019-20 Black Summer, Science for Wildlife captured a significant, disease-free koala population and sheltered them at Taronga Zoo while the surrounding eucalypt forest burned. After months of habitat surveys to confirm the bush had recovered enough to support them, the team released the koalas back into Kanangra-Boyd National Park. Since then, the charity has run one of Australia's longest post-fire wildlife monitoring efforts, deploying camera traps across the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area to track how koalas, brush-tailed rock-wallabies, and greater gliders are recovering in burned versus unburned habitat.