You’d be hard-pressed to find this story on any Aussie news sites yesterday, but the US media lapped it up… Aussie scientists have launched a field trial in NSW to vaccinate wild koalas against the widespread disease that can cause blindness, infertility, and death. Alongside habitat clearing and bushfires, chlamydia has devastated populations of the endangered marsupial, with over 80% of one koala population in northern NSW infected by the disease. The trial involves scientists vaccinating and monitoring around half of the koala population in NSW’s Northern Rivers region. They’re hoping it’ll provide answers about how much of a population needs to be vaccinated to significantly reduce the spread of infection. As for why the US was so into this news, it might have something to do with talk show host John Oliver having a koala chlamydia ward at Australia Zoo named after him back in 2018. It was a whole thing…