Can your Koala Gardens trade some koalas with other similar small properties to increase biodiversity?
Definitely not - these are wild animals and extremely territorial. The only problem koalas face is pure loss of habitat, on a massive scale (well after the near killing of them to extinction up until 1930, for their superior pelts).
You simply cannot move koalas about, they just sit and starve to death morbid, or they try to get back home and usually die along the way.
They are very complex the moment you start interfering with them.
As a doctor you might be interested to know that treating them in a hospital setting is fraught with complexity because as a wild animal that lives alone and does not socialise, when they are captured to treat, they stress. Their cortisol levels rise very high, and we end up dealing with all kinds of extra health conditions that do not happen to them in the wild. So rehabilitating wild koalas is a very difficult endeavour and partly due to this our success rates are very low, around 20%.
That one released in the video was reported walking up the middle of the road, in a 100 kph zone, about 500 m down the hill from my lowest boundary. The fella who released her there with me, helped me rescue her out of some dense shrubs she climbed into when some kind people stopped and shooed her off the road. So it was nice to get him to come release her. From her spot there in Nikki's tree she could actually see clear down to the shrubs we rescued her from. She stayed around on and off for a week, then she left, presumably back down to her original home range.
Another lovely girl that I helped rescue 500 m the other direction, after being hit by a car, was released into Neil's tree, and she had a joey in pouch that got named Neil. (Neil started the whole Tillie's tree idea). Her name is Glory. She stayed around for 2 days and then I never saw her again, until just last week! Suddenly after more than 3 years, just across the road, 15 m from where we rescued her, there she was. So she got her bearings and left here back, to her home range where she has been all this time.
This property sits in what has been a koala corridor, to disperse and ensure genetic diversity (which I think is what you mean). Koalas know how to do this best - I would be totally against humans interfering in koala breeding by attempting to manipulate this. Breeding choice is a really complex process between koalas in a colony and best left to the experts - the koalas.
The biodiversity aspect is about encouraging a rich diversity of flora and fauna to create stable ecosystems that can hopefully cope at least a little better with climate change. I will say however, that the shocking impact of the fires these past weeks, that are still continuing, makes me wonder if this is a pipe dream. Nothing stands after these huge fires that is for sure.
I have the habitat for 14 known vulnerable species found in a 10km radius of the property. So far we have verified 6 of those species on the property. So part of the work is to take all these things into account when do regenerative work.
Thanks so much for trying to think outside the box with that idea!