Too Cute to Fail

Koalas are threatened by climate change, cars, and chlamydia. Can Australia find a way to protect its most beloved animal?

- Katherine J. Wu

Ten-month-old Emerson fixed his big brown eyes on me and yawned. Still groggy from a nap, the koala rubbed his face, then stuck out an expectant paw. The nurse escorting me through his enclosure smiled. “He’s looking for his milk,” she said.

Four months earlier, when Emerson was admitted to Northern Rivers Koala Hospital, in New South Wales, Australia, he was so small that volunteers had to feed him with a syringe, dribbling formula into his mouth, his furry body swaddled in a towel. Now healthy and about five pounds, he was one of the most effortlessly anthropomorphized animals I had ever come across. With his big nose and round- bodied floofiness, his shuffling movements, his droopy eyelids and eagerness to cuddle, he seemed like nature’s ultimate cross between a teddy bear, a bumbling grandpa, and a sleepy toddler.

“The first thing I tell my volunteers when they come here to start is: ‘You will not be cuddling these koalas,’ ” Jen Ridolfi, the volunteer coordinator for Friends of the Koala, the nonprofit that runs Northern Rivers, told me. But sometimes even the most stoic get attached. Many koalas spend months here; volunteers call them “dear,” “sweetie,” and “love.” I watched one volunteer lean down to coo at a male named Gigachad. “I just want to kiss his nose,” she said, before quickly assuring me that she wouldn’t. Even FOK’s veterinary staff will occasionally pat the backs of koalas during routine checkups or slip a hand into the paw of an animal under anesthesia.

Ridolfi is vigilant about volunteers for a reason. Of the roughly 350 koalas admitted annually to Northern Rivers, only about a third survive. Chief among the threats they face is chlamydia—yes,