Millions of koalas one lived in Australia. About 100,000 survive today. What’s happening to these popular animals? Wildfires raged in Australia during January 2002. Firefighters struggled against them, but the blazes destroyed 600,000 acres of forest. The flames’ victims included countless koalas. These tree-climbing mammals live only in eastern Australia. But the fire alarms caught the attention of koala lovers around the world. The wildfires were just part of much larger problem: Forests are vanishing throughout eastern Australia. Cute and popular as koalas are, they’re having trouble hanging on.