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- <text id=90TT2431>
- <title>
- Sep. 17, 1990: World Notes:Australia
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Sep. 17, 1990 The Rotting Of The Big Apple
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 61
- World Notes
- AUSTRALIA
- Man's Best Marsupial
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Those mournful eyes! Those hairy ears! Those sharp claws and
- lips stained with eucalyptus leaves! What else could those
- words describe but the koala, Australia's informal mascot and
- the world's favorite marsupial. But the koala is in trouble,
- so Australians are tramping into the bush to collect eucalyptus
- leaves, which will be dried and mounted on gold-colored pins
- engraved with the words I SAVED A KOALA. At $1 each, the pins
- are expected to raise more than $4 million in Australia, the
- U.S. and Japan. The money will help preserve the animal's
- habitat, mostly in eastern Australia, and fund research into
- koala ecology.
- </p>
- <p> Once numbering in the millions, Australia's koala population
- has dwindled to about 400,000 as fur hunters took their toll.
- Today the koala is threatened by disease, road accidents and
- a steady shrinking of the eucalyptus forests, where the animal
- lives and feeds.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
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