Balancing overpopulation and conservation targets to optimize koala
management strategies
Abstract
The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) is Australia’s largest arboreal
folivore that inhabits eastern and south-eastern Australia. While its
populations are in decline in areas of New South Wales and Queensland,
high and increasing densities in the Mount Lofty Ranges of South
Australia raise concerns of overbrowsing. This challenge highlights the
need for optimized fertility-control strategies to balance sustainable
population management with ecological, ethical, and logistic
complexities. Demographic models are valuable tools for predicting
population dynamics, but their accuracy hinges on reliable estimates of
population density, often influenced by biases in expert-elicited and
citizen-science data. We developed and combined a point-process model,
an ensemble species distribution model, and a demographic model to
project koala populations in the Mount Lofty Ranges over the next 25
years to assess the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of
fertility-control interventions. We tested two hypotheses: (1) koala
distribution is driven by rainfall, temperature, and native vegetation,
with summer rainfall boosting habitat suitability, and (2) spatially
targeted fertility intervention is more cost-effective than generalized
strategies due to subpopulation connectivity. Accounting for sampling
biases and local densities, our models estimate that highly suitable
areas in the Mount Lofty Ranges are determined by rainfall, temperature,
and vegetation. Without intervention, this population could increase by
~10% in 25 years. Fertility control focusing on adult
females was the most cost-effective (~AU$28 million)
strategy, although this scenario was slower at reducing population size
compared to an intervention also sterilizing female back young. While
the choice of sterilization scenario has minimal impact on overall
costs, ethical considerations and long-term conservation goals such as
population density thresholds will have more influence on managing
expenses effectively.