This year we completed another successful trip to St Bees Island. We caught 26 individual koalas, all in good health, with the help of Mackay Marine Parks. This island continues to intrigue us with its thriving koala population. Our goal is to be minimally invasive and observe these unique animals living without the pressures of human intervention.

We encountered some koalas from previous years, but mainly new individuals across our study area: population turnover is always high from year to year as koalas disperse across the island between our trips.

Despite the occurrence of Chlamydia and Koala Retrovirus on the island, we did not encounter any koalas with signs of disease. These koalas have no ground based predators, no vehicles nor any of the common impacts from humans that koalas on the mainland deal with. We would like to think it will stay this way for years to come.