Dutch zoo welcomes a baby koala for first time in history

For the first time ever, a baby koala has been born at a Dutch zoo. The Ouwehands Dierenpark, located in Rhenen, in the province of Utrecht, is the very first zoo to welcome a baby marsupial of this kind, an endangered species native to Australia. It’s also the first time, to public knowledge, that a koala has been born in the whole country. The Ouwehands zoo is also the only zoo in the country to house koalas.

The three adult koalas (two males, one female) were brought to the Ouwehands Zoo in April of last year, and since then, zookeepers have been trying to encourage them to mate, but only recently found success with the birth of this joey. The koala joey was born about two months ago, but zookeepers only recently confirmed the birth had happened after noticing movements in the mother koala’s pouch. Koala babies are born blind and hairless, and enter their mother’s pouch immediately after birth, making it difficult to tell if one has been born.

It will still be a couple of months before the visiting public will get to see the koala baby. Zookeepers expect the baby to poke its head out of the mother’s pouch for the first time around the end of this year. Koala babies typically stay in their mother’s pouches for around six months after being born, and then transition to hitching a ride on their mother’s back, until they finally go out to explore on their own when they are around one year old.

Said Marijn Poldermans, the head of animal care at the Ouwehands Zoo, “The birth of this young koala is a wonderful milestone for our team and an important step for the conservation of this special species.”

Indeed, koalas are a critically endangered species, primarily due to habitat loss as a result of deforestation. Australia also experiences ferocious bushfires, which break out in the dry shrubbery of the outback and destroy forests and harm animals like koalas. Koalas are primarily dependent on eucalyptus trees as their food of choice, and these types of trees are extremely susceptible to wildfires. The animals were officially categorised as endangered by the government of Australia back in February of 2022.