“It kills koalas because they get so sick they can’t climb trees for food or escape predators, and females can become sterile,” says Samuel Phillips, a Sunshine Coast University microbiologist who helped develop the vaccine.
The scientists’ initial goal is to transplant around 50 koalas living in the North Rivers region of New South Wales. The specialists intend to hunt down the marsupials and catch them painlessly. After the koala receives its dose of the vaccine, it will spend a day at a special wildlife clinic so that vets can check for side effects. Then the animal will be left with a pink mark on its back, so as not to accidentally catch it again, and then returned to its natural habitat.
It is claimed that the experiment will show how many animals need to be vaccinated to protect the population from chlamydia. ‘Marsupial’ chlamydia campaign endorsed by Australian Department of Agriculture and New South Wales Department of Planning and Environmental Protection.
It is worth noting that koalas do not have an unambiguous version of the origin of the disease. However, marsupials are thought to have contracted chlamydia through contact with natural waste from sheep and cattle. After that, the disease began to be transmitted sexually, as well as from the female to her offspring. Conservation biologist Matthew Crowther of the University of Sydney, meanwhile, monitors the koala population in northern New South Wales and says that today around 80% of individuals in the region are suffering. of chlamydia.
It should be noted that scientists are not only sounding the alarm bells because of the spread of the disease among the “eucalyptus” marsupials. The New South Wales government estimates that current threats, including chlamydia, habitat destruction and traffic accidents, could wipe koalas off the face of the earth as soon as 2050.
Read the Latest Science and Technology News Today on The Eastern Herald.
