Koala health and our health are connected. This is why.

Amazing and vital work on koala conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More was reported by the ABC this morning. Conservationists and vets believe they have successfully wiped out chlamydia in a Brisbane koala population though inoculation. However, the journalists have omitted the most important finding about koala disease in the last couple of years – the work by Edward Narayan. We now know why koalas suffer from this awful disease – it’s land clearing and the stress that imposes. This is why koala health and our health is connected.

Thank you Guy Healy for pointing to this article on Facebook this morning … for being the one to find such interesting pieces in the media for me : )

They say ‘prevention is better than cure’ because it is. Rebuilding ecosystem structure and function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More is the only thing that will prevent chlamydia outbreaks in koalas.

So, the next question is, why bother? Why do koalas matter at all? This is what I cover in the article below. You can also read this.

Addressing land clearance, connectivity and general ecosystem health is going to be necessary, because it will prevent future disease outbreaks. We will not be able to restore koala populations unless we address this root cause.

Why is it ‘necessary’? Because koala health and our health is connected

You may think this is drawing a long bow but it isn’t. The stress imposed by environmental change results in increased anxiety and depression, leading to chronic disease. This article on the challenge faced by farmers says ‘It has been shown that chronic stressors have a major influence on well-being and health’. There are dozens of similar articles.

The link between ecosystem decline and health is obvious, so why is it not appearing in our political discourse and media? Rebuilding wildlife populations is the only hope we have to restore ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More. Why then, is much of our farming system still dependent on killing wildlife?

Koala decline affects us in ways we can’t even imagine yet

People are animals too. We suffer environmental loss in the same way. Farmers just happen to be connected directly to the land and are among the first to be affected. We’ll be affected too, when food prices increase or there are shortages in our supermarkets.

Climate change is a byproduct of ecosystem chaos(Of energy and ecosystems). Ecosystems are thermodynamically driven. Disorder occurs when energy dissipates and becomes more chaotic. For example, the release of hot air into the atmosphere results in that energy is freer to disperse (maximum entropy). The opposite is true when energy is locked into biological processes, when it is stored inside molecules (minimum entropy). Stability in ecosystems occurs More – it’s not climate change that kills us, it’s the uncertainty it brings. It’s not knowing when the next rains will come, and whether we should plant crops to feed ourselves, or if our home will simply be destroyed.

Summary of what we must do to secure our future

• The root cause of wildlife decline is land clearance, so we must stop that now, and begin reconnecting fragments.
• The only way to restore functioning ecosystems is through rebuilding wildlife populations.
• The work of veterinarians in addressing koala disease is vital, as it buys us the time needed for revegetation programs to work.
• The next step is getting the importance of koalas into the public consciousness. For that to happen, we will need to retrain journalists, scientists and politicians to think differently about animals.