Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00555:body:0:p78
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00555
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Lee 1984). Weaning coincides with periods of high food availability and favourable climatic conditions. This ensures the best survival conditions for offspring approaching independence (Ballantyne et al. 2015). The joey remains near the mother for another year before reaching sexual maturity at around two years of age, at which time it may disperse. Males provide no parental care (Mitchell and Martin 1990).

27.2 Demography
Records for wild Koalas report females commonly surviving to 13–14 years of age (Close et al. 2017) and up to at least 18 years (Martin and Handasyde 1990), and more than 12 years for males (Martin and Handasyde 1999), equating to a generation length of 6–8 years (TSSC 2012b). Mortality rates and causes vary between age cohorts and are location-dependent, and mainly threat-driven. In the 'Koala Coast' (south-east of Brisbane), disease is the largest single contribution to mortality, followed by natural causes and vehicle strikes, and then dogs (Rhodes et al. 2011). Mortality rates range from 8.5% (subadult males, Queensland) to 40% for adult males in Port Stephens, New South Wales (cited in TSSC 2012b; Thompson 2006) and >60% for 2–3 year old males in the Koala Coast, south-east Queensland (Rhodes et al. 2011). This last figure contrasts to other studies of the Koala Coast in peri-urban and remnant bushlands that found survival rates are high for both juveniles (89–96%) and adults (81%) (Thompson 2006), indicating that the potential for recovery of populations is very good where threats can be mitigated or removed.

27.3 Movement patterns
Koalas have a highly variable home range. Males typically have a larger home range than females with home range size increasing as trees become more widely spaced (Whisson et al. 2016). In general, home ranges are substantially larger inland in the semi-arid woodlands than in mesic coastal forests, reflecting variation in local patch context and quality. For example, some individuals in Central Mackay Coast bioregion have small home ranges of less than 2.0 ha (Ellis et al. 2015), whereas in the Mulga Lands bioregion home ranges are up to 169.5 ha (Davies et al. 2013). Home range size can also vary substantially within the same region (Ellis et al. 2002; Kavanagh et al. 2007) and may shift spatially across years (Ellis et al. 2009). High variability has been found on some islands (6.0–132.4 ha, North Stradbroke Island, Cristescu et al. 2011), while not on others (4.6–8.8 ha St. Bees Island, Ellis et al. 2009) and the latter study found individuals in overlapping home ranges rarely used the same trees, indicating resource partitioning on fine scales. Juveniles tend to have relatively smaller home ranges than adults (Thompson 2006). Koalas use both natural and built features as home ranges or boundaries (Close