First published January 9, 2020.
Keli is a koala joey from New South Wales who, according to the hospital, was found alone on the ground on 8 September 2019, weighing under 275 grams (less than ten ounces) and missing most of his fur because of a fungal skin infection. Volunteers took him to the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital, where he was treated, hand-raised and, months later, shown off in photos as a healthy, fully furred young koala ready to go back to the bush.
His story spread in January 2020, at the height of Australia's Black Summer bushfires, and it was often told as if he had been pulled from the flames. That is not quite right. Keli's problem was an infection, and by the hospital's account he was found in early September, weeks before the fire season reached its peak on the mid-north coast. His recovery still matters, because it happened at the same hospital that became the centre of the koala rescue effort that season. Below is what is known about Keli, what the hospital does, and how to read the big wildlife numbers that circulated at the time.
Who Keli is and why he needed help
Koalas are born tiny, roughly the size of a jellybean, and spend about six months developing inside their mother's pouch. After that a joey rides on her back and slowly learns to eat eucalyptus leaves, is fully weaned at around a year old, and often stays near her for some months after that. A joey found on the ground on its own at Keli's size is in serious trouble: it cannot feed itself, keep warm or escape dogs and other predators.
Keli had an extra problem. A fungal infection had stripped away much of his coat, leaving his skin exposed. Fur is a koala's insulation and rain jacket, so losing it makes a small animal even more vulnerable to cold and stress. Nobody knows for certain how he became separated from his mother; that is common with orphaned joeys, which are often found after the mother has been hit by a car, attacked by a dog or fallen ill.
At the hospital he received treatment for the infection and was raised by carers until his fur grew back and he could manage a diet of leaves. The before-and-after images released by the hospital show the difference clearly: a thin, patchy little animal in the first photos and a round, grey, fluffy young koala in the later ones.
The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital
The hospital in Port Macquarie, on the New South Wales mid-north coast, has treated sick and injured wild koalas since the 1970s and is run largely by volunteers under the charity Koala Conservation Australia. Its everyday caseload is made up of the main threats koalas face in that region: car strikes, dog attacks, disease such as chlamydia, and joeys that have lost their mothers.
When fire swept through koala habitat on the mid-north coast in late 2019, the hospital's work suddenly drew global attention. Staff and volunteers went into burnt forest to search for survivors, treated koalas with burnt paws and singed fur, and set up drinking stations in the landscape for animals left without green leaves. Keli was one of many patients in the wards that season, but he arrived for a different reason from the burns cases around him.
(The Facebook post originally embedded here is no longer available.)
The bushfires and the 480-million figure
We wrote at the time about the scale of the losses. The best-known number came from ecologist Chris Dickman at the University of Sydney, who estimated that around 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles had been affected by the fires in New South Wales alone. The university later explained that this was an estimate built from published animal-density figures multiplied by the area burnt, and that "affected" did not mean every one of those animals had been confirmed dead. Some would have survived, fled or died later from lack of food and shelter.
The figure also left out bats, frogs and insects, so in one sense it was conservative. As the fires grew, Dickman's estimate for the whole country rose past one billion animals, and a later study commissioned by WWF-Australia put the number of animals killed or displaced at close to three billion. These are modelled numbers, not counts, but they all point the same way: the 2019–20 season was one of the worst wildlife disasters in Australia's recorded history.
The widely shared claim that around 8,000 koalas had burned to death on the mid-north coast should be treated with the same care. It was an early estimate, and the exact total has not been independently confirmed. Federal environment minister Sussan Ley told ABC radio that up to 30 percent of the koalas in that region may have died and said she was working with koala experts, backed by A$6 million, on habitat corridors and plans for releasing animals that had been treated in hospitals.
Are koalas functionally extinct?
During the fires, headlines repeated the idea that koalas had become "functionally extinct." That was never an established scientific assessment. The phrase describes a population so small that it can no longer reproduce or play its role in the ecosystem, and it did not fit the species as a whole, which still numbers in the hundreds of thousands across eastern and south-eastern Australia; a 2025 CSIRO estimate put the total at roughly 730,000 to 920,000 animals. We looked at that claim in a separate article.
The real situation is serious enough without exaggeration. In February 2022 the Australian government upgraded the koala's status from vulnerable to endangered in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, citing drought, disease, land clearing and the 2019–20 fires. A New South Wales parliamentary inquiry in 2020 warned that koalas in that state could disappear in the wild by 2050 unless habitat loss was tackled. Endangered means a real risk of extinction in those regions; it does not mean the animal is already gone.
How the public responded
The hospital's online fundraiser, titled Help Thirsty Koalas Devastated by Recent Fires, turned into one of the most successful charity appeals Australia had seen. It passed A$1 million within days of launching in November 2019, reached more than A$1.7 million by the end of that month and stood above A$2 million by Christmas, with donations continuing into 2020. The hospital said most of the money would go to a wild koala breeding programme, alongside around 100 drinking stations for wildlife in fire-hit areas and a water-carrying vehicle.
People also gave time and skills: knitted pouches for orphaned joeys, eucalyptus cuttings from private gardens and volunteer hours. Stories like Keli's helped keep that attention alive, because they showed a clear result. One small, sick animal had come in, and a healthy one was going back out.
What Keli's story teaches about helping wildlife
Keli's recovery is a reminder that most wildlife rescue is slow, patient work that happens long before and long after any disaster makes the news. A few practical lessons apply far beyond Australia:
- If you find a young wild animal alone, do not try to raise it yourself. Contact a local wildlife rescue group or vet; they can tell you whether it truly needs help.
- For koalas in particular, the biggest everyday threats are cars, dogs and lost habitat. Slowing down in koala zones and keeping dogs in at night genuinely saves lives.
- Give to established local rescue groups and hospitals, and check that a fundraising page is official before donating.
- Read disaster statistics carefully. An estimate of animals affected is useful, but it is not the same as a confirmed death toll.
For readers who followed the fires, our pieces on Lewis the koala and other rescued animals show the harder side of the same season. Keli is the gentler side: a joey who arrived bald and underweight and left with a full coat.
Sources: Koala Conservation Australia / Port Macquarie Koala Hospital; Wikipedia: Koala; University of Sydney: statement about the 480 million estimate; NBC News: estimate rises above one billion; ABC Radio: Sussan Ley interview; InQueensland: koala listed as endangered; GoFundMe: Port Macquarie Koala Hospital appeal; Port Macquarie News: fundraiser tops $1.7 million; Port Macquarie News: support continues after the fires.
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