‘It’s dangerous to put a number on them’. Media coverage of koalas during the 2019–2020 ‘Black Summer’ bushfires in Australia

Eleanor Stalenberg; Daniel Lunney; Chris Moon

doi:10.1071/PC24019

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Previous Next Contents Vol 30(6)

‘It’s dangerous to put a number on them’. Media coverage of koalas during the 2019–2020 ‘Black Summer’ bushfires in Australia

Eleanor Stalenberg ^A , Daniel Lunney

^B ^C ^* and Chris Moon ^D

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia.

^B Faculty of Science, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia.

^C Australian Museum, 1 William Street, Sydney, NSW 2010, Australia.

^D Retired.

^* Correspondence to: Daniel.lunney@sydney.edu.au

Handling Editor: Mike Calver

Pacific Conservation Biology 30, PC24019 https://doi.org/10.1071/PC24019

Submitted: 15 March 2024 Accepted: 9 October 2024 Published: 25 November 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Context

The unprecedented scale and severity of the 2019–2020 ‘Black Summer’ bushfires in Australia were an environmental disaster, and koalas became the public face of the fires’ toll on wildlife.

Aims

We investigated the media stories on koalas during the fires to identify what was reported, and how the numbers of koalas killed by the fires were sourced and reported.

Methods

We searched for media articles published in major Australian print and online news outlets, local sources, press releases and international outlets for the terms ‘koala’, ‘fire’, ‘bushfire’, ‘emergency’, ‘disaster’ and ‘burn’, published between 15 October 2019 and 31 October 2020, and recorded any numbers of koalas given in those reports. This places our methods in a qualitative realm of investigation.

Key results

We reviewed 371 media articles on the bushfires and koalas in New South Wales (NSW). Almost half included an estimate of the numbers of koalas killed in NSW. Almost a third stated that koalas are going extinct in NSW, however almost two thirds did not mention that koalas were already in decline from threats other than fire.

Conclusions

We concluded that it was dangerous to put numbers on koalas. Misinformation, half-truths, and neglecting the important role of science and scientists, can erode public trust in the media and in science.

Implications

The obsession with numbers has left a legacy that can drown out the more considered narrative of science and lead to distortions of policy and management, as well as distract from other critical attributes of koala conservation.

Keywords: conservation, disaster, evidence, extinction, journalism, media studies, qualitative research, science communication, science in the media, threatened species, wildfire, wildlife rehabilitation.

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