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The 99th Koala: Rescue and resilience on Kangaroo Island
After bushfires devastated Kangaroo Island's koala population, Kailas Wild went to help. This is the inspiring and sometimes confronting story of what happened next. An arborist by trade and conservationist at heart, when Kai heard that some of the injured koalas could only be reached by a tree climber, he drove 1500 kilometres to volunteer. Seven weeks later, he had participated in the rescue of over 100 koalas, become an international social media sensation and formed a special bond with a baby koala – Joey Kai. In words and pictures, The 99th Koala shares Kai's experience and introduces us to some of the koalas of Kangaroo Island. Sometimes tragic, sometimes hopeful, above all Kai’s story commemorates our unique wildlife, and demonstrates the power of one person trying to make a difference. ‘At a time when many people have felt helpless to act against the immensity of the fires or the threat of climate change, Kai's daily descriptions and videos of saving helpless animals have been a welcome dose of personal courage and deep humanity.’ ABC 'In words and photos that are impossible to look away from, Kai introduces some of the koalas on Kangaroo Island, painting a powerful picture of Australia's unique wildlife ... a gripping reminder of a summer that feels like it's in our country's distant memory.' Mamamia 'Harrowing, touching and uplifting.' The Courier Mail 'The 99th Koala is a plea for wildlife, it's a tribute to the volunteers who strive to save animals and rehabilitate them. It's an emotional rollercoaster that shows the devastation and damage ... but it's a tale of love and dedication.' Good Reading
- GenresNonfictionAnimalsNature
208 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 1, 2020
4 people are currently reading
51 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 25, 2021
It has been over a year now since the devastating bushfires on Kangaroo Island and when I saw this book come up to read, I was very keen to get my hands on it.
I mean, who doesn't love koalas, right? Australia's symbol, beautiful, cuddly little things, right? Well, the koalas in this book are traumatised, burnt and/or starving so there's that. Despite all of that, this book isn't a depressing read. It contains beautiful photographs of koalas and the incredible people who helped them, including the author. I love that the author is so honest about his feelings throughout the book - I just wanted to give him a big hug at times.
The volunteers at Kangaroo Island (and elsewhere) have my heartfelt admiration for what they have done. I can't even imagine how difficult it would have been to jump into something like this, not really knowing where to start but wanting to make a difference anyway.
A really worthwhile read. Good on ya, Kai.
I mean, who doesn't love koalas, right? Australia's symbol, beautiful, cuddly little things, right? Well, the koalas in this book are traumatised, burnt and/or starving so there's that. Despite all of that, this book isn't a depressing read. It contains beautiful photographs of koalas and the incredible people who helped them, including the author. I love that the author is so honest about his feelings throughout the book - I just wanted to give him a big hug at times.
The volunteers at Kangaroo Island (and elsewhere) have my heartfelt admiration for what they have done. I can't even imagine how difficult it would have been to jump into something like this, not really knowing where to start but wanting to make a difference anyway.
A really worthwhile read. Good on ya, Kai.
February 15, 2021
This was a very quick yet difficult read (made somehow easier by many photos of koalas - I will not pretend it wasn't the photo on the cover that lured me in).
The author is an arborist, who in the wake of the devastation of the Black Summer in Australia volunteered to help and save koalas on the Kangaroo Island. I really appreciated how honest his account was. It also made me realize how extremely draining the rescue efforts were for all the volunteers - not only physically but also emotionally. An important and necessary book.
The author is an arborist, who in the wake of the devastation of the Black Summer in Australia volunteered to help and save koalas on the Kangaroo Island. I really appreciated how honest his account was. It also made me realize how extremely draining the rescue efforts were for all the volunteers - not only physically but also emotionally. An important and necessary book.
June 24, 2022
It's been a month since I finished this book and my heart still hasn't recovered from this reading. In it, Kailas tells us about his experience as a volunteer rescuing koalas on Kangaroo Island during the fires that devastated Australia in 2019. The author tells us about his day-to-day life during the rescues along with photographs, which makes the story even more heartbreaking. It is another necessary reading that invites us to reflect on how we are treating the planet. It is very difficult for me to write a review because everything I say about it is going to fall short.
March 13, 2025
The Black Summer bushfires of 2019 and 2020 devastated a large part of the Australian bush. This is the story of one individual, Kailas Wild (Kai), who drove from Sydney to Kangaroo Island to help with the rescue and rehabilitation of the decimated koala population.
This story will bring a smile to your face and, in the next moment, bring tears to your eyes. The story and photos are stunning and breathtaking.
Kangaroo Island lost half of its koala population during the fires and the aftermath. Nationally, the koala is now listed as an Endangered Species.
This book is NOT for everyone.
This story will bring a smile to your face and, in the next moment, bring tears to your eyes. The story and photos are stunning and breathtaking.
Kangaroo Island lost half of its koala population during the fires and the aftermath. Nationally, the koala is now listed as an Endangered Species.
This book is NOT for everyone.
June 23, 2021
It’s impossible to grow up where I did and not interact with koalas in some way. There’s a strong local population and we had several that made their homes at various times of the year, in the gums across the road from our house. Mating seasons were noisy. And then of course there’s the local koala hospital, which was established decades ago to care for and rehabilitate injured and sick koalas. If you find one (and lots of people do, either in their backyards or hit by cars, or attacked by dogs, etc), that’s where you take them. As the area increased in popularity and more people moved there, they lost more and more of their habitat and sometimes found themselves in places where it was dangerous for them. Everyone who lives there has visited, probably multiple times, and at least half have thought about volunteering there. I live 1400kms away now but I still take my kids there whenever we visit.
In September of 2019, that area began experiencing bushfires, which was very unusual. It’s a temperate climate, usually high rainfall and lacking in extreme temperatures -not immune to bushfires by any means, but unusual, especially as it was even before summer. There were loads of sick, burned and injured koalas taken to the hospital ( an estimation of a loss of around 40% of the populations as well) and it wasn’t long before other parts of NSW and then other parts of Australia, starting experiencing a truly catastrophic bushfire season, known now as Black Summer.
This is about one of those places – Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia. In January of 2020, it was torn apart and devastated by fires that took human lives and countless animal lives. Kailas Wild is an arborist from NSW who also volunteered with the SES and had koala-handling experience, and when he heard what had happened, he put out feelers to see if someone with his skills might be needed. After all, koalas are often high up in trees and when threatened, will climb higher. In order to get some of them down for medical attention, or to relocate them to areas less devastated, his abilities might be helpful. Even crucial.
Most of this book is photographs – stunning photographs. Some of them show koalas peering out of cages as they await medical examination or to be transported to a healthy habitat area, or orphaned joeys being bottle fed by volunteers. Others are truly devastating. Koalas with burned hands and feet or missing the fluff from their beautiful ears. Landscape shots showing the destruction of the fires and scores of trees reduced to little more than black stumps. They are all powerful images, a mix of heartbreaking and hopeful and showcasing some of the volunteers who like Wild, gave up their time and spent weeks dedicating themselves to helping the injured animals to often devastating consequences.
This book actually made me realise something I’d never thought about for people undertaking this role – how truly traumatic it must be and how much it could and would affect someone’s mental health. Wild is frank about some of the terrible things he sees or the times where he rescues a koala only for it to be assessed as so injured or burned that it could not possibly survive and the kindest thing to do would be to end its suffering. It’s heartbreaking for him each time, especially as wild animals often “rally” and appear strong as a defense mechanism: to appear weak in the wild is to be a target. So sometimes wild animals will seem quite well and it isn’t until things are truly dire, is it obvious that they are not well at all. I’ve seen this in nature documentaries and the like before, but to witness it in real life, especially after you’d put so much time and effort into each rescue, trying to help each koala, to know that some of them cannot be helped, although a reality of the situation, would still be utterly devastating. And Wild is also frank about the emotional trauma as well, how helpless he feels at times and how he questions whether stressing these already stressed koalas in his attempts to get them down from their trees, is the right thing to do. Especially for the ones who are quite far gone. It is sadly, not something I thought much about before, your thoughts are generally focused on the animals. To read the mental sadness and the toll it takes on the humans working with them, was definitely eye-opening.
I appreciated a lot about this: the effort, time and dedication of the workers, the message about the toll it takes and the subtle talk of the importance of biodiversity and tackling climate change. This book doesn’t have a lot of words, a lot of it relies on the photographs, but the ones it does have, are important.
In September of 2019, that area began experiencing bushfires, which was very unusual. It’s a temperate climate, usually high rainfall and lacking in extreme temperatures -not immune to bushfires by any means, but unusual, especially as it was even before summer. There were loads of sick, burned and injured koalas taken to the hospital ( an estimation of a loss of around 40% of the populations as well) and it wasn’t long before other parts of NSW and then other parts of Australia, starting experiencing a truly catastrophic bushfire season, known now as Black Summer.
This is about one of those places – Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia. In January of 2020, it was torn apart and devastated by fires that took human lives and countless animal lives. Kailas Wild is an arborist from NSW who also volunteered with the SES and had koala-handling experience, and when he heard what had happened, he put out feelers to see if someone with his skills might be needed. After all, koalas are often high up in trees and when threatened, will climb higher. In order to get some of them down for medical attention, or to relocate them to areas less devastated, his abilities might be helpful. Even crucial.
Most of this book is photographs – stunning photographs. Some of them show koalas peering out of cages as they await medical examination or to be transported to a healthy habitat area, or orphaned joeys being bottle fed by volunteers. Others are truly devastating. Koalas with burned hands and feet or missing the fluff from their beautiful ears. Landscape shots showing the destruction of the fires and scores of trees reduced to little more than black stumps. They are all powerful images, a mix of heartbreaking and hopeful and showcasing some of the volunteers who like Wild, gave up their time and spent weeks dedicating themselves to helping the injured animals to often devastating consequences.
This book actually made me realise something I’d never thought about for people undertaking this role – how truly traumatic it must be and how much it could and would affect someone’s mental health. Wild is frank about some of the terrible things he sees or the times where he rescues a koala only for it to be assessed as so injured or burned that it could not possibly survive and the kindest thing to do would be to end its suffering. It’s heartbreaking for him each time, especially as wild animals often “rally” and appear strong as a defense mechanism: to appear weak in the wild is to be a target. So sometimes wild animals will seem quite well and it isn’t until things are truly dire, is it obvious that they are not well at all. I’ve seen this in nature documentaries and the like before, but to witness it in real life, especially after you’d put so much time and effort into each rescue, trying to help each koala, to know that some of them cannot be helped, although a reality of the situation, would still be utterly devastating. And Wild is also frank about the emotional trauma as well, how helpless he feels at times and how he questions whether stressing these already stressed koalas in his attempts to get them down from their trees, is the right thing to do. Especially for the ones who are quite far gone. It is sadly, not something I thought much about before, your thoughts are generally focused on the animals. To read the mental sadness and the toll it takes on the humans working with them, was definitely eye-opening.
I appreciated a lot about this: the effort, time and dedication of the workers, the message about the toll it takes and the subtle talk of the importance of biodiversity and tackling climate change. This book doesn’t have a lot of words, a lot of it relies on the photographs, but the ones it does have, are important.
March 15, 2021
This account of the koala-rescue campaign in bushfire-ravaged Kangaroo Island is gripping and very emotional. Accompanied by superb photos, arborist Kailas Wild tells a story sometimes dramatic and inspiring, and at other times sad and heartrending, packed with tense and harrowing descriptions of koala rescues. As one of the few professional tree-climbers/ experienced koala handlers called to Kangaroo Island following the wildfires that swept through parts of Australia in 2019, he used his rope climbing equipment to scale 30 metre high burnt trees to flag down traumatised koalas, bundle them into pet carriers, and drive them to the animal hospital for treatment – or sometimes to be euthanised.
As you read the book you feel amazed he didn’t suffer long-lasting mental health difficulties following this incredibly harrowing and challenging time on Kangaroo Island. He is, indeed, very open about his emotional distress and his mental trauma. Throughout the book the reader is moved by his skill and courage, in this dangerous and tough work.
Kailas gives many fascinating details of his work, including for example his knowledge of how to test the structural integrity of a fire damaged tree before he starts climbing; his endurance of scratches from the claws of frightened koalas; and the best way to handle them, to avoid the very real danger of being bitten by their knife-sharp teeth. The photos are often dramatic and impactful; shots of him up a tree trying to reach a koala on an adjacent tree, images of a burnt koala, photos which make clear his own mental trauma, visible in his face.
His working days among the burnt plantations involved 10-12 hours of physically and emotionally draining labour. He spent “days alone amongst burnt trees and dead animals… and even the successful rescues are traumatic.”
After a considerable time in which he feels a lack of co-ordination and resources, he finally gets the help he needs from two other wildlife rescue experts – Deb and Fraya. The efforts they go to as the terrified koalas resist capture is astonishing. Their own stress is compounded by the knowledge of the stress to which they are subjecting the koalas – and then at the end the rescued animals may have to be euthanised.
The author is very open about the toll this takes on his mental health. He also considers the ethics of human intervention in the lives of wild animals suffering an environmental disaster; does his work compromise the ability of the wild animals to live independently when released back to the wild, having become over-reliant on humans? He also describes the moment when they realise the risk of injury to the koalas themselves outweighs the benefits of attempting rescue.
Finally the time comes when Kailas and his colleagues realise they have done everything they can, and the remaining koalas, having already survived this long, will most likely thrive.
A deeply moving book for all those who love animals, care about environmental issues and are interested in wildlife conservation, but also an account of courageous human endeavour and compassion, in the face of ethical dilemmas.
As you read the book you feel amazed he didn’t suffer long-lasting mental health difficulties following this incredibly harrowing and challenging time on Kangaroo Island. He is, indeed, very open about his emotional distress and his mental trauma. Throughout the book the reader is moved by his skill and courage, in this dangerous and tough work.
Kailas gives many fascinating details of his work, including for example his knowledge of how to test the structural integrity of a fire damaged tree before he starts climbing; his endurance of scratches from the claws of frightened koalas; and the best way to handle them, to avoid the very real danger of being bitten by their knife-sharp teeth. The photos are often dramatic and impactful; shots of him up a tree trying to reach a koala on an adjacent tree, images of a burnt koala, photos which make clear his own mental trauma, visible in his face.
His working days among the burnt plantations involved 10-12 hours of physically and emotionally draining labour. He spent “days alone amongst burnt trees and dead animals… and even the successful rescues are traumatic.”
After a considerable time in which he feels a lack of co-ordination and resources, he finally gets the help he needs from two other wildlife rescue experts – Deb and Fraya. The efforts they go to as the terrified koalas resist capture is astonishing. Their own stress is compounded by the knowledge of the stress to which they are subjecting the koalas – and then at the end the rescued animals may have to be euthanised.
The author is very open about the toll this takes on his mental health. He also considers the ethics of human intervention in the lives of wild animals suffering an environmental disaster; does his work compromise the ability of the wild animals to live independently when released back to the wild, having become over-reliant on humans? He also describes the moment when they realise the risk of injury to the koalas themselves outweighs the benefits of attempting rescue.
Finally the time comes when Kailas and his colleagues realise they have done everything they can, and the remaining koalas, having already survived this long, will most likely thrive.
A deeply moving book for all those who love animals, care about environmental issues and are interested in wildlife conservation, but also an account of courageous human endeavour and compassion, in the face of ethical dilemmas.
December 29, 2020
This is a fantastic account of Kailas’ experiences on Kangaroo Island following the January 2020 bushfires. Accompanied by beautiful, though sometimes heart-wrenching photography, he takes us out into the fire ravaged plantations in search of koala survivors and into the emergency wildlife hospital. He shares his concerns, passion, heartache, fear, frustrations, trauma and tears, along with the exhilarating moments of successful rescues.
This is a story that should never have happened. But it did, and we need to learn from it, and be better prepared next time. Thanks Kai, and go well.
This is a story that should never have happened. But it did, and we need to learn from it, and be better prepared next time. Thanks Kai, and go well.
February 9, 2021
An incredibly moving account of a volunteer’s plight to rescue injured koalas on Kangaroo Island. The Black Summer Bushfires of 2019-20 will be a time in Australia’s history we will never forget. The 99th Koala gives readers a glimpse into the lives of those who volunteered in the aftermath; the enormous effort they put in to help save wildlife, the physical and emotional toll this took, and the ethical dilemmas it raised within them. You’ll need tissues for this one.
January 25, 2021
Don't know how to describe this one; short, intense, moving.
May 10, 2021
many photos. a lot of heart.
May 16, 2021
A beautiful book which affirms how amazing our wildlife is, and how important we are, as humans, to ensure that OUR world keeps us AND them safe now and well into the future.
August 21, 2021
An amazing story of one selfless man who gave his time and his skills to rescue koalas on Kangaroo Island after the fires. Beautiful photographs accompany the story.
July 11, 2021
Easy read. Great pictures.An inspiring book . A positive message. “ Do not allow fear of failure or the pursuit of perfection prevent you from volunteering . Also that helping takes more than good intentions. You need to act with integrity, thoughtfulness and empathy for others.”
Using words and pictures Kailua Wild shares his experience in saving the Koalas . We get to
know some of the koalas of Kangaroo Island . The story demonstrates the power of one person trying to make a difference.
Using words and pictures Kailua Wild shares his experience in saving the Koalas . We get to
know some of the koalas of Kangaroo Island . The story demonstrates the power of one person trying to make a difference.
November 3, 2021
“It's taught me that whatever I choose to put my energy into now - no matter how big or small - can count for something positive in the future.”
Gorgeous story, both heartbreaking and heartwarming. Solidifies in me that I am on the right track…
Gorgeous story, both heartbreaking and heartwarming. Solidifies in me that I am on the right track…
August 24, 2023
I have always loved koalas. I remember seeing the fires on the news and the stories about the wildlife. Kai story is amazing and heartbreaking. Cried so many times. And the koala skeleton is quite confronting. However, the photographs are stunning
December 13, 2020
Lisa bookclub 2021
December 21, 2020
An incredibly thoughtful and honest account from someone with a great deal of passion and empathy. Wild takes you into his life and into his head as he works to rescue koalas on Kangaroo Island in the aftermath of the devastating bushfires. His words and the accompanying photos are moving, beautiful and heart wrenching.
December 13, 2020
Lisa bookclub 2021
January 30, 2021
Beautiful story of one man’s experience rescuing koalas on Kangaroo Island after the horrific fires of 2020. Harrowing, but uplifting with wonderful photographs.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews