For koalas, uncontrolled chlamydia can cause blindness and painful cysts in a animal’s reproductive tract that may lead to infertility or even death.
Worse still, antibiotics used to treat the disease can destroy the delicate gut flora koalas need to consume their staple diet of eucalyptus leaves, leading some to starve to death even after being cured.
The disease can also spread quickly.
In 2008, there was a “very, very low chlamydial prevalence” — about 10% — in the koala population in Gunnedah, a rural town in northeast New South Wales, according to Mark Krockenberger, a professor of veterinary pathology at the University of Sydney.
By 2015, that figure had risen to as high as 60%. Now, about 85% of that koala population is infected with the virus, Krockenberger said.
“If you think about it, that’s not a viable population anymore because of infertility. Pretty much every female that’s infected with chlamydia becomes infertile within a year, maybe two years maximum … Even if they survive, they’re not breeding,” he said.
Experts say situations like that in Gunnedah are playing out among koala populations across Australia, threatening populations already vulnerable to worsening bushfires and habitat loss due to deforestation.
Scientists are now trialing vaccines against chlamydia to protect the animals.
“We run a very high risk, if this vaccine strategy doesn’t work … of localized extinctions,” Krockenberger said.
Are koalas endangered in Australia?
There are few more emblematic Australian animals than the koala.
The gray, fluffy-eared marsupial, which eats leaves from the eucalyptus tree and carries its young in its pouch, can only be found in Australia and is regularly seen in cultural representations of the country.
But koalas face a number of threats to their survival. Apart from disease, the marsupials suffer habitat loss and are often attacked by wild dogs and hit by cars.
Source : cnn
