One simple way to help Koalas in your community is by creating wildlife-friendly fencing at your home.
Contrary to popular opinion, koalas do climb down from the trees and move around at night. They will often walk on the ground to find new food trees and mates.
Koalas live in complex social groups and individual members of koala society maintain their own “home range”. These home ranges can be as great as 1 to 1.5 hectares, depending on their age and size. The home ranges koalas live in are becoming an increasingly urbanized environment, requiring them to travel through our suburban backyards, putting them at risk of dog attacks or becoming trapped from food and shelter.
The future of koala populations living in urban landscapes relies on their ability to roam through their home ranges with reasonable safety. One way you can help them to roam without an impasse is to create koala-friendly fencing. Alternatively, you can keep them safe from danger by imposing exclusion fencing.
Koala friendly fencing
Koala-friendly fencing is designed to assist koalas in easily climbing through or under a fence. You can create koala-friendly fencing by adding modifications to existing fencing or by choosing certain materials to build with. Some options include:
Providing an alternative route over a fence by placing a plank or post positioned at an angle from the top of the fence to the ground.
Use fencing materials such as timber posts or chain wire mesh that a koala can easily grip and climb.
Add a plank or board to the top of your fence to allow koalas to walk across without coming into your backyard.
Koala and wildlife exclusion fencing
Exclusion fencing aims to prevent koalas and other wildlife from being able to climb and enter your backyard or property, by using fencing materials that are unclimbable from the outside of your fence. It is important the inside of your fencing can be scaled, in case wildlife does manage to enter. Some ways you can create exclusion fencing are:
Attach a strip of metal or Perspex sheeting to the top section of an existing fence to prevent a koala from climbing that side. The sheeting should be at least 900mm wide with the top edge of the sheeting at least 1.5m above ground level.
Use fencing materials such as brick, metal sheeting, Perspex that does not provide a grip for a koala to climb.