Koalas Are the Latest Victims of Climate Change
May 7, 2008 by KBOM
It seems that, once again, “human problems” are showing how they effect non-humans as well. In the latest display of the climate change domino-effect, Australia’s native koala bears are the victims.
New studies show that the rising level of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere depeletes nutrients from the leaves of the eucalyptus tree- the primary, and often only source of food for the koala.
Researchers working on the study also found that the amount of toxicity in the leaves of eucalyptus trees rose when the level of carbon dioxide was increased.
Ian Hume, emeritus professor of biology at Sydney University, estimated that if current levels of global CO2 emissions remained stagnant, it would result in a noticeable reduction in the koala population in only 50 years.
Koalas, who have already been displaced from the most nutritous trees on fertile land due to farming and suburb production, only eat the leaves of about 25 of the 600 species of eucalyptus in Australia, a number that Hume believes will be reduced drastically in the very near future.
