Australian Koalas to be dead in a decade!?!?!

<-----look at these cuties and to think-------->

they'll be dead in one DECADE!

(mabye)

Alarms about the demise of the iconic and peculiar animal, which sleeps about 20 hours per day and eats only the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, have been raised before.But Deborah Tabart, CEO of the Australia Koala Foundation, believes the animal's plight is as bad as she has seen it in her 20 years as a koala advocate."In south-east Queensland, we had them listed as a vulnerable species which could go to extinction within 10 years. That could now be seven years," she said. "The koala's future is obviously bleak."South-eastern Queensland has the strongest koala populations in the vast country, meaning extinction in this area spells disaster for the future of the species, said Tabart.The biggest threat is the loss of habitat due to road building and development on Australia's eastern coast -- traditional koala country. The joke, said Tabart, is that koalas enjoy good real estate and are often pushed out of their habitat by farming or development."I've driven pretty much the whole country and I just see environmental vandalism and destruction everywhere I go," she said. "It's a very sorry tale. There are [koala] management problems all over the country."Massive bushfires that raged in the country's south for weeks during the Australian summer, burning a million hectares of land, would also have killed thousands of koalas.Meanwhile, there is the worst drought in a century, genetic mutations from decades of inbreeding in some populations, and the widespread incidence of chlamydia, a type of venereal disease that affects fertility, to further cut koala numbers.

As written on:

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2007-04-11-australias-koalas-extinct-within-a-decade

I think there may be more info on the site if you want to take a look!