Rescued baby koala now a ‘bossy boots’
Neve Brissenden |
When locals found a drenched and shivering baby koala on the banks of the Brisbane River at the height of the Queensland floods, they weren’t sure if she would make it.
Delivered to rescuers in a green shopping bag by evacuated residents, the sanctuary rated the joey’s chance of survival as four out of ten.
But six months on and the koala, aptly named Raine, is a “bossy boots” that never stops eating – ready to return to the wild.
“She took over and told the other joeys what leaf they could eat – whatever she didn’t want. She’s a bit of a bossy boots,” Raine’s carer Marilyn Spletter said.
“She was eating leaf all the time and with her milk she just scoffed it down.”
After her weight jumped 54 per cent in care, Raine was released back into the Queensland forest in August, along with two other rescued koalas.
The species went from being listed as vulnerable to endangered in February after fires and floods wiped out almost 50 per cent of the population.
“Saving koalas like Raine is important work because every koala is now precious,” said Tanya Pritchard, Landscape Restoration Project Manager for the World Wide Fund for Nature-Australia.
WWF’s Koalas Forever program is aiming to double koala numbers on the east coast by 2050.
AAP
