Findings from a unique research project will help protect the future of koala populations in central Victoria.
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Researcher Louise Jory and a team of volunteers are completing the final days of searching for koala poo on the ground in Ballarat's Woowookarung Regional Park as part of a year-long project.
The team has inspected 68 sites twice throughout the year, covering nearly one hectare of ground on their two-day a week search for poop to identify where koalas might be located in the park.
Into the future hopefully numbers will increase.
- Louise Jory, researcher
Ms Jory and volunteers found poo a couple of weeks old at a monitoring site on Thursday and said they have seen some koalas during their time in the park in the past.
"It is exciting. The first one we saw was big and healthy and was high up the tree. He was just munching away," she said.
Ms Jory, a Master of Environment student at University of Melbourne, is working with the Koala Foundation and Friends of Canadian Corridor on the research project.
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It is the first koala study to be completed in the area and Ms Jory said historically, there was no clear data on koala numbers.
"Into the future hopefully numbers will increase. On the outskirts of the park there are regenerated areas which in the future will have bigger trees and could sustain a higher population of koalas," Ms Jory said.
"I see it as looking bright into the future."
Woowookarung Regional Park is managed by Parks Victoria.
Ms Jory will produce a map to show areas that need better protection for koalas, including where speed limits on roads could be lowered, the number of tracks reduced and areas for re-vegetation.
She said residents could choose to slow down in areas where koalas have been sighted and it was important for them to keep dogs on a lead.
Friends of Canadian Corridor secretary Jeff Rootes said it was in the group's interest to know where good koala habitat trees to inform their revegetation work.
"In the future there will be other pressures on the environment and Ballarat will grow," he said.
"All we wanted to know five years ago was do we have any koalas. We are well past that point. The next step would be to know the genetic diversity."
Friends of Canadian Corridor has engaged residents in the project and helped bring volunteers on board.
Ms Jory said research like this was not possible without the help of volunteers.
"It is a lot of work so having volunteers makes us get it done quicker," she said.
Volunteer Freya McBurney said she had been helping out every session since October.
The environmental science student said she was keen to see what people were doing in the field.
"I have seen so much close to the ground like bugs and spiders that I have never seen before. I get surprised every day with something I didn't know existed," she said.
Volunteers can break poo findings apart to check if it is from a koala as it will smell like eucalyptus, but samples also get analysed and confirmed by another researcher.
Ms Jory has worked with koalas in the past as a veterinary nurse and at zoos in Queensland.
She said research on koalas in Woowookarung Regional Park could be continued in the future by other research students and there was potential to do further investigation on genetics and other specific areas.
"It will be great to know there is koalas in the future," Ms Jory said.
Ms Jory will work on data analysis and write up a report by the end of the year once site monitoring ends at the end of next week.
Mr Rootes said there was potential for future research projects on other native species in Woowookarung Regional Park.
Friends of Canadian Corridor is aware of four threatened species in the park.