'Claude the koala': Australian nursery owner reveals prolific plant thief

Humphrey Herington, a nursery owner in Australia, racked his brain for weeks to find the thief who was eating his seedlings. At first, he thought it was goats who escaped their shelter. However, he discovered later that it was not a fast animal but a lazy koala.

One day, Herington walked into work and encountered a cheeky possum, dubbed Claude, dizzy and too sated to move, surrounded by stripped eucalypt plants.

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"He looked like he was full. He looked very pleased with himself," he told the BBC. "We came out to work one morning, and he was sitting on a pole. There were lots of plants missing that morning. I guess, the koala must have had a big feed and was too tired to return to his tree."

According to the staff at the Eastern Forest Nursery near Lismore in New South Wales, the plants Claude was snacking on cost them $3,800 (A$6,000). They are now building a koala-proof fence around the seedling tables to prevent the marsupial from eating more plants.

In 2022, Australia listed koalas as endangered species along most of the East Coast as their numbers declined drastically due to land clearing, bushfires, drought, diseases and other reasons. The irony is that the nursery was growing the plants Claude ate to boost koala habitats in the region.

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The team first noticed the chewed plants a few months ago. "There weren't really any signs, there was no tracks or anything to indicate what it could have been," Herington said. "It was a mystery," he added.

Despite setting a possum trap and examining animal droppings for clues, they caught the culprit when he became too greedy.

When Herington learned Claude, the koala, was the thief, he gently wrapped him in a towel and placed him on a tree about 300 metres from the nursery. However, the arboreal marsupial returned and continued his night-time visits to the nursery.

Herington isn't mad at Claude. He's amused, as koalas aren't known for their agility or ingenuity. "I just couldn't believe it was a koala. I was shocked but was also a little bit impressed," he said.

Herington has been at the nursery for 20 years, but it was the first time something like this happened. "Is it that there is a shortage of food?" he wondered.

A 2021 NSW food inquiry found koalas would be extinct by 2050 unless they took urgent action. According to some conservation groups, as few as 50,000 koalas remain in the wild.

(With inputs from agencies)

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