Save the Koalas!!

People say I look like a Koala so this story struck a chord with me!

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Koalas are threatened by the rising level of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere because it saps nutrients from the eucalyptus leaves they feed on, a researcher said Wednesday.

Ian Hume, emeritus professor of biology at Sydney University, said he and his researchers also found that the amount of toxicity in the leaves of eucalyptus saplings rose when the level of carbon dioxide within a greenhouse was increased.

The researchers found that carbon dioxide in eucalyptus leaves affects the balance of nutrients and "anti-nutrients" -- substances that are either toxic or interfere with the digestion of nutrients.

An increase in carbon dioxide favors the trees' production of carbon-based anti-nutrients over nutrients, so leaves can become toxic to koalas, Hume said.

Hume estimated that current levels of global carbon dioxide emissions would result in a noticeable reduction in Australia's koala population in 50 years due to a lack of palatable leaves.

Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe, a marsupial physiologist, said koalas had already disappeared from parts of Australia but remained plentiful in others and were unlikely to be wiped out by climate change. They already have been displaced from the most nutritious trees on the most fertile land by the spread of farms and suburbs, he said.

Dag, this global warming shit is SO real. If you have yet to see Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" you really should. Everyone needs to be educated on the reality of our ailing Earth. We worry about wars, money, sickness, etc. as we should, but if we don't put the same effort into our planet won't be nothing to worry about at all!