Notorious ‘cheeky’ thief caught stealing from Australia nursery — again. Meet Claude
After pulling off a massive heist, rarely does the thief go back to the scene of the crime for a second loot.
This can’t be said of Claude, the famous seedling-stealing koala of Australia.
In September, eucalyptus seedlings started to disappear from a plant nursery in New South Wales, ABC reported.
“I noticed some of my seedlings were being chewed off and I thought it was probably a possum,” nursery owner Humphrey Herington told the news outlet Sept. 5. “Every night, there’d be a few more and a few more (missing).”
More went missing each night, Herington said, until one day when he saw a koala sitting on a bench near a pole next to all the seedlings.
“It seems like he’d had a really big feed that night, so I think he was too full to go and climb up his tree,” Herington said.
The koala was named Claude, after his identifiably long claws, and the nursery began to think of ways to protect the seedlings.
The nursery, which supplies seedlings to WWF-Australia for a forest restoration project, fenced in the area and put a shade over the top to try to keep Claude out, Herington told ABC.
It didn’t last long.
“Claude the koala strikes again! This time, he’s been caught munching on eucalypt seedlings right in front of Eastern Forest Nursery staff!” WWF-Australia said in a June 4 Facebook post. “Talk about audacity!”
Then Claude brought reinforcements.
“So WWF installed two cameras in our nursery to see if they could see what was going on. From those cameras, we got some interesting footage of a different koala with a joey came in and was having a feed in the evening at night time,” Herington said in a video shared June 3 by WWF-Australia on YouTube. “We also got other footage of Claude coming back on the weekend when no one was at work doing a daylight raid on the nursery.”
WWF said the koalas’ incursions into the nursery show how desperate they are to find food, and their behavior justifies the need for eucalyptus trees to be planted.
“While Claude’s antics are amusing, they shed light on a critical issue: koalas in the area lack sufficient food,” WWF said. “Thanks to his cheeky behavior, we’ve planted an additional 500 seedlings for him and his mates.”
Thousands of seedlings, worth thousands of dollars, have been eaten by Claude-led koalas over the past year, ABC reports, but Herington doesn’t blame the animals.
“Even though there’s a little bit of an economic cost, Claude’s really highlighted a need, and it’s created a lot more awareness of habitat loss,” Herington told the news outlet. “I’m glad that he’s around. I like to see the koalas around the nursery.”
Claude lives on the eastern coast of Australia, outside Lismore in northeast New South Wales.
This story was originally published June 5, 2024 at 4:22 PM with the headline "Notorious ‘cheeky’ thief caught stealing from Australia nursery — again. Meet Claude."
