THE Government is resisting calls to cull Kangaroo Island’s rising koala population, despite rapid growth of pesky marsupials camping in the island’s commercial blue gum plantations.

Latest figures show KI’s koala population has grown to about 50,000, more than triple the last estimate of 13,000.

It’s the latest setback in the Government’s expensive battle to manage KI’s koala numbers, which began in 1996.

Finnis MP Michael Pengilly said the Government’s sterilisation program was simply not working to curtail the koala population and he called for more drastic steps to be considered.

media_camera Kangaroo Island koalas are rising and they need culling, says an MP.

“It doesn’t have to be a gun but it would be far kinder to shoot them than being cruel and having them fall out of trees and come crashing to the ground when the blue gums are harvested,” Mr Pengilly said.

“The Government’s spent millions and millions of dollars on the koala sterilisation program and it clearly hasn’t worked.

“I’m not being cruel or bloody-minded or radical on this — you have to remember they’re an introduced species to the island.”

media_camera Finnis MP Michael Pengilly.

Environment Minister Ian Hunter refused to explicitly rule out culling koalas on KI, but vowed to intensify the sterilisation program.

“It is not government policy anywhere in Australia to cull koalas,” Mr Hunter said.

“The sterilisation program has halved the number of koalas on KI since it began in 1996 and this program will be extended.

“(The Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources) is working with the University of Adelaide on new modelling to better understand and accurately predict where koalas are and their densities and their impacts on tree health.”

DEWNR regional manager Brenton Grear maintained the sterilisation program was working, and the earlier population survey of 13,000 hadn’t taken into account that koalas could be in the blue gum plantations, because they were a “suboptimal food source”.

But he maintained the number of koalas per hectare, rather than raw numbers, was the best indicator of whether a problem existed.

“It means they’ve spread across the island in greater numbers than we predicted,” he said.