Koala Rescue

The Moment 

Body Count Staff from an animal care center in Queensland, Australia, helped photographer Joel Sartore make this array of a single week’s koala losses. Some of the dead, like the mother and baby in the bottom row, were attacked by dogs. Others were struck by cars. A few, like those shown brightly bandaged, arrived alive and received treatment for their injuries but still did not survive. —Margaret G. Zackowitz

Behind the Lens

How—and why—did you take this photograph?

I knew I had to get a picture of dead koalas for this story, but I kept running into trouble. People at the animal clinic I was working with said it would look bad. The Australian government doesn’t even like to acknowledge that these koalas are endangered. But the staff at one place I visited thought this was an important picture to make. They told me that in this area these animals will be gone entirely in another three to five years. They want the world to know that. So instead of disposing of the bodies as the dead koalas arrived during the week, the staff members saved them for me back in a freezer room at the facility. One of the workers smuggled them out for me to photograph, and when we were done, we went back and replaced them in the freezer.

How did that make you feel?

Talk about a sinking feeling. Even though I’d never seen these particular koalas alive, I kind of felt like I’d gotten to know them. Putting them all back in a bin in the freezer room was hard. The one that really got me was the mother with the baby still in her arms.

Racing to Rescue Koalas

Koalas are under siege. Can Australia rescue them?

By Mark Jenkins
Photograph by Joel Sartore

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/05/koala-rescue/jenkins-text

It’s two in the morning and a koala is caught in barbed wire on a fence, like a prisoner trying to escape. A phone rings in the home of Megan Aitken in Burpengary, a suburb north of Brisbane. Aitken, 42, runs a volunteer organization devoted to rescuing wild koalas from a surprisingly wide array of hazards. Before the dispatcher has even given her the location, she has thrown her clothes on over her pajamas.

When Aitken arrives on the scene, Jane Davies and Sandra Peachey, two other volunteers, are already there. The koala is clinging to a chain-link fence, its fur snagged in horizontal strands of barbed wire. Towering eucalyptus trees, as pale as ghosts, rise on the far side of the fence.

“He was obviously trying to get to the trees on the other side,” Aitken says.

Standing in the bright cones of car headlights, Aitken pulls on heavy leather welding gloves. Despite their huggable, stuffed-animal appearance, koalas can be ferocious when resisting capture. They’ll growl, flail, fight, and bite like angry raccoons, and Aitken has the scars to prove it. Next she places a wire cage on the ground near the animal and opens up a thick blanket. Then the three rescuers rapidly get to work.

Davies throws the blanket over the animal, both to calm it and to protect the rescuers from its teeth and claws. Peachey opens the lid of the cage, while Aitken firmly grasps the little black-nosed beast through the blanket, frees it from the fence, and drops it snarling and snapping into the cage.

“Well done, ladies!” Aitken shouts.