Australia: Man’s Best Marsupial

Those mournful eyes! Those hairy ears! Those sharp claws and lips stained with eucalyptus leaves! What else could those words describe but the koala, Australia’s informal mascot and the world’s favorite marsupial. But the koala is in trouble, so Australians are tramping into the bush to collect eucalyptus leaves, which will be dried and mounted on gold-colored pins engraved with the words I SAVED A KOALA. At $1 each, the pins are expected to raise more than $4 million in Australia, the U.S. and Japan. The money will help preserve the animal’s habitat, mostly in eastern Australia, and fund research into koala ecology.

Once numbering in the millions, Australia’s koala population has dwindled to about 400,000 as fur hunters took their toll. Today the koala is threatened by disease, road accidents and a steady shrinking of the eucalyptus forests, where the animal lives and feeds.