The video starts out shakily. At first, you can only see a shoulder, and then a clearly distraught woman comes into frame. As she begins to talk, she cries because of the horrors she has just seen.
The tragedy that she witnessed was preventable. Demand a complete and immediate ban on logging in koala populated areas in Victoria, Australia. In the video, Portland, Australia resident Helen Oakley is aghast. She is one of many Victorians who care about the neighboring koalas and their dwindling territory. So when she entered an area where eucalyptus trees - a favorite food source of the koala - were being logged, she wanted to see how the clearcutting was affecting the local koala population.
What she saw was shocking. The land was nearly entirely barren. Where once stood miles upon miles of eucalyptus trees now only a few sparse patches remained. With so few trees, the koalas in the area were forced to huddle in the various patches to find enough food to survive. But after a while, even those trees had no leaves for them to eat.
The aftermath was a six and a half mile swath of land that had become a graveyard.
Starved koalas lay hanging from trees, or baking in the ground under the hot sun. Other koalas met a different, but just as gruesome fate - caught in the logged area, chewed up, and spat out by the machinery. "Look at the destruction that they have done and there's koalas lying there dead ... and there are mothers killed with their little babies. Australia should be ashamed of this." - Helen Oakly
Now people are rightfully outraged and demanding justice. The koala was feared to be heading towards extinction even before fire ravaged much of Australia and their habitat. Now officials say at least 3,000 koalas have been killed in that emergency. This makes it all the more devastating that in just one of the logged areas in Victoria activists have found 80 koalas, 30 of which had to be euthanized. The species cannot endure such tragedy.
Those responsible for this illegal and disgusting attack on the barely surviving koala habitat must be brought to justice. But more importantly, ALL logging in Victoria within koala habitat must end immediately to protect the species from dwindling even more.
It is time the government does everything they can to protect this iconic Australian animal. Sign the petition and demand that the Victorian government ban koala habitat logging now. 