Ashman et al. (2019)

Ashman KR, Rendall AR, Symonds MRE, Whisson D (2019) Understanding the role of plantations in the abundance of an arboreal folivore. Landscape and Urban Planning 193: 103684 PDF

What’s the paper about?

Koala bears* are quite common here in Victoria, and so are commercial timber plantations. As the title of the paper suggests – we looked at how plantations drive the abundance of these cute and furry (but also smelly and occasionally bad-tempered) icons of Australia. We found that eucalyptus plantations have higher abundance of koalas then natural bush, but also that the greater the vegetation cover, the fewer roads in the area and the cooler it is tend to lead to more koalas.

What’s the story behind it?

Kita Ashman was, back a few years ago, my honours student (as evidenced by this publication). She has moved on to pastures (or indeed plantations) new for her PhD, but I still help her out a little bit. My role in this paper was fairly small; basically helping out with the statistical analysis and subsequent interpretation – plus contributing some tweaking to the text. It was nice, though, to work together with Kita again. Desley Whisson, her supervisor, sits opposite me in the office we work in, and we have a fun time moaning at each other (never about Kita though).

*If you like to troll Australian mammalogists, add the word ‘bear’ to ‘koala’ and then start counting the seconds – you’ll reach about 2.

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