Academic literature on the topic 'Koala habitat'

The koala is both an Australian icon and an animal that has attained ‘flagship’ status around the world. Yet its history tells a different story. While the koala figured prominently in Aboriginal Dreaming and Creation stories, its presence was not recorded in Australia until 15 years after white settlement. Then it would figure as a scientific oddity, despatched to museums in Britain and Europe, a native animal driven increasingly from its habitat by tree felling and human settlement, and a subject of relentless hunting by trappers for its valuable fur. It was not until the late 1920s that slo

Australasian biodiversity is facing immense challenges with losses of prime habitats and food sources through increased anthropogenic factors such as climate change, bushfires, and habitat modification. Wildlife species are requiring greater conservation intervention supported through numerous wildlife rescue and rehabilitation programmes in this region. It is important to record the physiological stress responses of rescued wildlife and currently available conservation physiology tools can certainly aid the conservation management and rehabilitation of rescued wildlife. In this chapter, we showcase the applications of minimally invasive stress hormone and immune response (haematological blood cell profiling) biomarkers using case studies of rescued koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) to quantify their physiological stress responses to environmental trauma and disease conditions, and clinical intervention. Applications of these physiological biomarkers can advance our understanding of how wildlife respond towards and cope with environmental challenges and support conservation goals of rescue centres to strengthen wildlife rehabilitation and release back to the wild once the proximate stressors have been eliminated.

Compared to a predator’s diet, plant food has two great advantages: it is abundant and it does not run away. ‘Herbivorous mammals’ explains how these advantages are matched by difficulties: plants are generally of low nutritional value and must be eaten in large amounts; leaves with protective abrasive particles can quickly wear down herbivores’ chewing teeth; and mammals cannot make their own cellulase enzymes for breaking down cellulose to sugars. The eating habits and the challenges of small herbivores (e.g. rodents, rabbits, and hyraxes) are considered, as well as those of large ungulates and elephants; marsupial herbivores (e.g. kangaroos, wombats, and koalas); and specialist herbivores (pandas, dugongs, and manatees).

There are about 2,000 entities in the world today that ethnologists call societies, each with distinct cultures. Perhaps the most obvious marker, and many argue the most important, is that each of these entities has its own language. Among the other societal attributes, besides language, that can make claims to human universality, or nearly so, is the cultural use of psychoactive substances— or what commonly are referred to as simply “drugs.” These range from mild stimulants such as coffee, tea, cacao, coca, and kola to stupeficients such as opium and alcohol, to hallucinogens found in mushrooms, cacti, and a number of flowering plants. Since the Mesolithic and perhaps before, the vast majority of the world’s peoples have used one or more such substances for religious and related purposes. Even in their most seemingly secular contexts, drugs are often used in ritual and habitual ways that exhibit their cultural embeddedness. Increasingly the world’s remaining indigenous peoples and many local folk are confronting questions and the consequences of the production, processing, trade, trafficking, and consumption of drugs deemed illegal and illicit by global agencies and national polities. Some of these substances, usually in their unrefined forms, have deep roots in local and indigenous cultures and economies. Often they serve important roles in constituting and maintaining cultural identity. With ever-increasing modernization and globalization, the circumstances and conditions under which indigenous and local peoples produce, trade, and use these substances continues to change. In turn, psychoactive substances—whether sanctioned, proscribed, or both—often serve as agents in the creation and defense of local and indigenous “moral” geographies. The concept of moral geography (as used here) refers to both the actual and symbolic terrain upon which traditional societies elaborate their customary livelihood and belief systems, and the cognate spaces in which they defend these practices and perceptions. For most indigenous peoples, the drugs in their culture, whether sacred or profane, are manifest in both their moral economies and geographies. For some groups, drugs become defining elements in their relations with dominant cultures and polities. For others, they are less than determinate, but still play significant roles in mediating exchanges—both symbolic and material. In either case, they can serve as mechanisms of subordination, or modes of resistance, or sometimes both.