What are the koala population figures for particular years or areas?
Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to get accurate figures or even estimates of koala population figures because we can’t just go out and count them all. Koalas are notoriously hard to count. Until the early 1990s when the Australian Koala Foundation began work on the Koala Habitat Atlas, there has been no accurate way of assessing the amount of koala habitat in Australia. (More on the Koala Habitat Atlas). Because koalas rely so heavily on their habitat, we can look at the amount of vegetation present in Australia at the time of European settlement (1800s) compared to now to show the amount of habitat lost. Because there is so much less habitat available now (and it is highly fragmented) compared to European settlement, we can safely assume from that fact alone that there are a lot less koalas.
