Minister for Planning and Land Management Mick Gentleman is pleased to announce Tidbinbilla has a tiny new addition to their wildlife enclosure with the happy discovery one of the female koalas is carrying a young Joey in her pouch.
“It is a very exciting time for us at Tidbinbilla, as this is the first koala Joey born in our new koala enclosure and the first koala Joey born at Tidbinbilla since the 2003 bushfires,” Minister Gentleman commented “The male Joey has been named ‘Tucker’, short for bush tucker. He is the product of two of our resident koalas called Jed, the ‘sire’ or male koala, and Yellow, the ‘dam’ or female koala. He is now about five months old.”
Minister Gentleman said that Tucker will be a great addition to the existing family of koalas at Tidbinbilla. We currently have two males and two females in the breeding enclosure, as well as another nine koalas in our free-ranging enclosure. Gentleman Added that the koalas at Tidbinbilla were brought here as part of a translocation project from the Otway Ranges in Victoria in September 2013. Now that Jed is at confirmed breeding age we will use him to bolster our free-ranging population as needed through managed breeding strategies. Gentleman added that we will divide the breeding enclosure so that the females can be kept separate from Jed to manage their breeding and ensure that our females have suitable rest time between joeys as breeding can be very demanding on their bodies. The koalas in the free-ranging area are a non-breeding group through the use of contraceptive implants.

Minister Gentleman explained that this announcement comes just days after Tidbinbilla celebrated 80 years of providing a sanctuary for native species and a place for local residents to experience and explore nature. In 1936 the Minister for the Interior set aside approximately 810 hectares of Commonwealth land at the southern end of the Tidbinbilla valley to become a National Park and Fauna Reserve. Since then the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve has grown to 6466 hectares of land which is home to a wide range of Australian animals living in diverse sub-alpine habitats including wetlands, grasslands, and both dry and wet forests and woodlands.