Almost 700 koalas were culled in the Australian state of Victoria in order to keep their population under control, which was growing to the point where koalas were starving to death.
Victoria environment officials confirmed this week some 700 koalas were culled in the state's Cape Otway area in 2013 and 2014, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Wildlife officials captured and sedated the koalas. If they were determined sick, they were euthanized, according to The Guardian. Healthy females were given hormones to control their fertility.
But the culling apparently did not have the intended effect and wildlife officials are still dealing with koala overpopulation in Southern Australia. According to Frank Fotinas, who runs a caravan park in Cape Otway, more koalas were dying of natural causes than from being euthanized.
"The whole of the cape smelled of dead koalas," he told the ABC. "It smelled like death."
Environmentalists suggested moving the 8,000 Cape Otway koalas to new habitats in other areas instead of killing them. But ecologists say that is challenging because their habitats are dwindling and there aren't many places left for them to live.
"You must move them to a habitat similar to where they've been taken from, with the same species of trees for them to feed on, or they just won't adapt," Desley Whisson, an ecologist who participated in the culling, told The Guardian.
Sterilization is also an option, but Whisson said it would take years for results to show.
Bottom line, officials agreed there is no easy solution to saving the koalas, of which there are an estimated 80,000 left in the wild, according to the Australian Koala Foundation.
"I'm wanting to make sure that we're taking the best action we can in this terrible situation of overpopulation," Environmentalist Minister Lisa Neville said, the ABC reported. "I don't want to see koalas suffer."
