Haze the baby koala was saved by her mother’s pouch

Days after fire ripped through the forest they called home, survivors are still being found from the mid north coast bushfires. Some are smaller than others…

Haze has already endured more than she should. Her mother was killed in the fires yet her pouch offered her enough protection for a remarkable story of survival. Firefighters found little Haze alone in a burnt out forest near Harrington in NSW. She’s now being cared for by Christeen and Paul McLeod at Koalas in Care, Taree, a makeshift koala hospital that’s currently bursting at the seams with 25 of the marsupials clinging to life in the lounge room. The scale of the tragedy has been so extreme, they’ve even had to transfer some patients further up the coast to the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital.

In the meantime, Haze will be rebuilding her life in a woollen pouch rather than her mother’s natural version. Hopeful that she’ll have a forest home to return to once she’s weaned off her milk formula. It’s then that, fingers crossed, she’ll become the face of a new generation of koalas.