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Opinion

MARK PARDEN / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES Sam the koala became famous as a result of this photo of a firefighter giving him water during a wildfire.

They are perhaps the cutest living mascot a country could possess -- a tiny, non-threatening version of the Canadian grizzly more likely to cuddle you with furry little forearms than rip your larynx out.

The Australian koala bear rivals China's Giant Panda for that rare form of captivating charm, which prompts toy makers to borrow their likeness, stuff it and sell it off to millions of besotted kids.

This week, Australia is being warned the koala is under threat of extinction as numbers which reached into the millions in the 19th Century decline to around 43,000.

The Australian Koala Foundation suggests it may be just 30 years before we're seeing the last of the species munching reflectively on a eucalypts leaf in a zoo.

Koalas live in four Australian states -- Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia -- but have become a rarity right across the eastern seaboard.

In a once heavily populated stretch between the Queensland capital of Brisbane and the Gold Coast 100 kilometres to the north, human population growth has forced them out in the thousands.

You could spend a day searching the outlying suburbs of Sydney, where koala once abounded, and never find one.

The Koala Foundation visited 1,800 sites across the country and looked up 80,000 gum trees to calculate their 43,000 estimate.

Global warming could be to blame. The leaves in eucalypts trees, which provide almost the entire diet of the koala, have been found to decline in nutrient content but increase in toxicity when exposed to higher carbon dioxide levels.

But it is more probably lost habitat to human settlements, diseases such as pneumonia and blindness and the stress of living next to a noisy humans that is behind the worrying decline. More than 4,000 koalas, shy creatures and finicky eaters who spend most of their lives asleep in gum (eucalypt) trees, are also killed by cars and dogs.

The federal government's threatened species committee is to recommend by mid 2010 on whether the koala should be listed as vulnerable to extinction.

Representative Bob Beeton said the committee would not be swayed by its status as one of the country's favourite animals. "I mean, we'd consider the koala with the same level of diligence and dedication as if it were the death adder."

Hugh Possingham, professor of ecology at University of Queensland, said koalas should now be listed as a species of national significance.

It already is -- in financial terms.

Apart from being cute, it is responsible for more than an $1.1 billion in annual tourism revenue.

"Sam" the koala, photographed drinking from a fire fighters water bottle after the devastating bush fires in Victoria this year, was just another in a long line of bears who have captured hearts world wide.

Millions of tourists beat a path to Australia's door to gaze at our wildlife which, when closely examined in the light of international comparisons, isn't all that impressive.

There are no lions, no tigers, no grizzlies. Apart from the crocodile, which will kill you as soon as look at you, the dingo wild dog and a variety of poisonous snakes and spiders are the only land-bound creatures lethal to the human animal.

But the koala bear is a consistent hit with the visitors, even if it's not really a bear. Rather than sharing a kinship with the grizzly, its closet living relative is the wombat, one of evolutions' oddest looking creations.

The Japanese and most of Europe are besotted with the creature. University of New South Wales academic Roger March reported research last August showing the No. 1 reason Japanese tourists came to Australia was to cuddle a koala, though the research referred only to a narrow demographic.

In the 1990s, state governments began efforts to ban cuddling of koalas despite overwhelming opposition from tourism authorities and a nasty public debate about whether handling them actually causes the animal stress.

Few koalas are actually picked up by humans in koala reserves these days which may well be a good thing.

But, much like a toddler, they'll occasionally wrap their arms around a human handler when tired, which is about 90 per cent of the time.

It may be an endearing trait they need to work on in coming years, if they want to see in the 21st century.

Michael Madigan, the Winnipeg Free Press correspondent in Australia, is the Gold Coast bureau chief for the Brisbane-based Courier Mail.