Koalas Take a Bow at L.A. Zoo

Things are getting real fuzzy around here.

Karen and Janie (pronounced Janny), two cute Queensland koalas, had a coming out party Wednesday morning at the Los Angeles Zoo as they were carried by their keepers to new digs--an outdoor exhibit in the Australia section.

The furry, eight-pound debutantes are on a long-term loan from the San Francisco Zoo and will be joined this fall by a young male, which means that in the next year and a half, there just may be a wee koala baby for the public to coo and squeal at.

A second trio of two females and a male is also scheduled to be loaned to the zoo in about a year.

The Los Angeles Zoo is embarking on an aggressive breeding program, administrator Manuel A. Mollinedo said, to bolster its koala population. Currently, the Griffith Park-based menagerie is down to one male Victorian, a somewhat larger koala than the Queenslands that has a reddish chest, Mollinedo said. Minirri, the 10-year-old male Victorian, has been at the Los Angeles Zoo since birth. Later this year, he will be sent to a zoo in Columbus, Ohio.

There are only about 55 koalas in captivity in the United States, and zoos across the country are working together to breed more healthy koalas, according to Michael Dee, the Los Angeles Zoo’s curator of mammals.

“We mix and match them,” Dee said, “and that’s all done through the Queensland Koala Stud Book.”

The stud book is not so much a little black book of especially attractive marsupials, but a detailed family history of each Queensland in captivity to ensure that there is no inbreeding, Dee said.

The two females from San Francisco have been in quarantine since May 21, but will now be on display every day at their new outdoor home. They are the first koalas of their kind to call the Los Angeles Zoo home.

As Karen, who is 11, and Janie, 2, were released into their new habitat, the koalas immediately began exploring, scurrying from one tree limb to the next and playfully poking their heads from behind branches. “They are curious,” said Dee, who noted that koalas will probably become more sedate once they are accustomed to the new environment.

Karen and Janie will also be spending part of the day indoors at the Ahmanson Koala House, a.k.a. the Koala Hilton, while it is being renovated.

Transporting the creatures between the koala house and the outdoor facility must be done carefully by the keepers, Dee said, who will either hold them in their arms or get the animals to grab on to a large branch and carry them, “kind of like a flag.”

The animals will be fed fresh eucalyptus leaves gathered every day from the trees in Griffith Park and from the zoo’s five-acre eucalyptus farm created especially for koalas. Eucalyptus trees are plentiful in California, Dee said, but zoos in other parts of the country where the trees won’t grow often spend up to $10,000 a year per koala to ship in fresh leaves.

Zookeepers have to make sure the koalas have the best leaves to eat because the critters are extremely fragile. “If they don’t eat, they get sick because they don’t have fat reserves,” Dee said.

Although their cherubic figures might lead one to believe that they are overweight, Dee said that koalas simply do not get fat.

The koala program at the Los Angeles Zoo will include a total renovation of the Koala Hilton, an indoor facility that was built in 1982. When it reopens on Columbus Day weekend, the zoo’s koalas will be on display both at the koala house and the outdoor area.