Koala Research

Meet ... Jamie

Update November 2006: Jamie and Ingrid have remained fairly close to each other following the bushfire - probably good to have a friend nearby in difficult times. He is also looking very healthy and happy.

We met this fella just a few times before the awful fires of 21 - 28 January 2006. The most noticeable thing about him was always the missing fur above his right eye - it gives him a lopsided, slightly sad look. We don't know what caused it, but we met him during a breeding season, so it may have been a fight with another male (maybe Bear) or the result of a mating attempt with a feisty female! Either way, it should heal in time.

Somehow he survived the bushfires, and has become very special to us! He was first seen, after the fire, in a big Peppermint tree with Bear. It was one of the few trees in the area that still had green leaves, and they were sharing it. Ingrid was nearby, in one of the other green trees. We had Bear rescued and an attempt was made to rescue Jamie, but it did not succeed as he was onto us and went very high up the tree. Perhaps it was for the best, as he has healed himself in the intervening weeks!

His relationship with Ingrid has been fascinating. They would have known each other before the fire, and after the fire they were the only two koalas in their patch of bush. For the first few weeks they stayed close to each other - he in Bear's big peppermint, she in the same tree once, and other trees on the edge of her own home range. I think she was keeping him company while he healed. She was not injured by the fire, but he was - he had little burns to his back feet, and they would have been painful, but they were not extensive. He was wary of everything - particularly of us - and was never down low in the tree when we saw him. Then as he started feeling better (we think), he moved to another, nearby, patch of green gum trees closer to his normal home range.

Now Bear is back in the area, and we will wait to see what Jamie thinks of it all!

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