Australian-first innovation helping protect koalas on our roads
The Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) partnered with Endeavour Veterinary Ecology (EVE) to develop and trial the Fauna Escape Hatch (FEH) design for implementation across the Coomera Connector Stage 1 project, aimed at reducing koala vehicle strikes.
Youtube: https://youtu.be/JIGe5oywoag
This research-backed solution – funded through the Coomera Connector project – has now been officially verified by the Infrastructure Sustainability Council (ISC) as an Australian-first innovation.
This innovative structure enables koalas to exit road corridors safely via a one-way gate, reducing the risk of them re-entering the motorway or moving in the wrong direction. The FEH incorporates a frame with suspended, independently moving tines that allow animals to pass through in one direction only, ensuring safe and controlled exit from the corridor.
While primarily designed for koalas, the design can also be adapted for other species by adjusting the installation height. The FEH design builds on previous learnings and addresses the known limitations of existing escape structures (such as escape poles), which have shown low success rates. In contrast, trials conducted by EVE demonstrated that koalas successfully used the FEH 100% of the time when attempting to exit through the device.
Successful knowledge sharing is already driving market transformation and accelerating industry uptake, with monitoring confirming that the benefits of the FEH design are already being realised in practice.The adoption of the FEH will reduce koala and other fauna injury and death due to vehicle strikes, contributing significantly to ongoing conservation challenges.
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Image: Koala unable to re-enter road network from nature reserve. Credit – City of Moreton Bay Council