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Move over Claude … there’s a new leaf thief in town.
A youngster has been caught in the act of munching seedlings at Eastern Forest Nursery near Lismore.
Claude on the left and the new leaf thief on the right
Claude became a viral sensation in 2023 when the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) revealed his raids on the same nursery – a story that generated headlines around the world.
But behind Claude’s cheeky antics was a compelling message: a koala was invading a nursery because it didn’t have enough to eat.
Amazing tree planting milestone approaching
Enter Bangalow Koalas which began planting trees in 2019 to create a wildlife corridor across the Northern Rivers to provide food and enable koalas to move around safely. Bangalow Koalas is on track to plant tree number 500,000 by the end of 2025.
Linda Sparrow, President, Bangalow Koalas said:
It’s a huge milestone and a great thing for koalas. If we can do this, any community group can. We would love to mentor more groups to do what we are doing to benefit wildlife and people. Planting 500,000 trees is just the beginning. We want to get between 750,000 and 1 million trees in the ground by 2030. I just visited one of our plantings with trees only a few years old and I came across all this wonderful koala poo. There are koalas already there. It’s the most exciting, rewarding thing because it shows what we’re doing is making a difference.
WWF support has funded about 250,000 of the trees planted by Bangalow Koalas as part of WWF's Koalas Forever Initiative.
Tanya Pritchard, Senior Manager Koala Recovery, WWF-Australia, said:
Following on from the uplifting news of the creation of the Great Koala National Park, Bangalow Koalas 500,000th tree will help keep the momentum going. We’re proud to have helped Linda and her team reach this incredible milestone. WWF-Australia has an ambitious goal of doubling the number of east coast koalas by 2050. We’re working with communities, First Nations people, and government to restore critical habitats. There have been so many trees removed over so many years. Claude’s antics have helped raise awareness and encouraged people to get out there and plant more trees. It’s not just wildlife that benefits. Trees help filter our air, provide shade, and make our landscapes more resilient to droughts and floods. We all need trees.
Eastern Forest Nursery has supplied many of the trees being planted by the Bangalow Koalas/WWF partnership.
Nursery manager Humphrey Herington said:
When we took the original pictures of Claude it was definitely a surprise to get people ringing up from all around the world wanting to hear about his behaviour. The new koala we discovered in the nursery was quite a shock to my staff. We’d been working all day and at 3 o’clock one of the staff noticed this little koala sitting on the sprinkler. Everyone wanted to get a few pictures.
We put a lot of effort in to prevent the koala from re-entering because we’d lost literally thousands of seedlings. Improvements to the fence seemed to work because for the last few months we haven’t had any more seedlings destroyed.
Claude thank you for giving us a lot of enjoyment watching you and your behaviour in the nursery. We’re glad that you’re so fat now you can’t get back in and eat our seedlings. Please don’t introduce anymore of your offspring to our plants but we’re all very grateful for the awareness that you’ve brought for the cause of your whole family.
For more on WWF’s “we all need trees” campaign go to wwf.org.au/trees
Contact details:
Paul Fahy, 0455 528 161, [email protected]