The world wants to see Australia’s wildlife. A new global survey by adventure travel company Explore Worldwide has found that Australia is the number one destination international travellers want to visit for wildlife experiences, with 38% of respondents choosing Australia, more than three times the number who chose second-placed South Africa.
And the world’s ‘New Big Five’ animals to see are:
- Panda (41%)
- Elephant (32%)
- Kangaroo (32%)
- Koala (30%)
- Whale (29%)
These statistics highlight just how successfully Australia markets itself to the world, and how central our wildlife is to that success. Holidaymakers seeking an authentic wildlife experience come here to see species they cannot encounter anywhere else, with koalas and kangaroos among the most iconic.
Tourism Australia, the Australian Government agency responsible for promoting Australia to international visitors, produces highly polished campaigns that consistently showcase our extraordinary native wildlife. Koalas, kangaroos, wombats and other uniquely Australian species feature prominently, selling the promise of unforgettable wildlife encounters as an essential part of the Australian experience.
And the marketing is paying off. According to Tourism Research Australia, from 2025 to early 2026, international arrivals to Australia increased by 10% at 9.2 million international visitors, and they spent a record $40.9 billion in Australia.
Tourism Research Australia forecasts that international visitor spending will reach $46 billion annually by 2030. Tourism in Australia is worth 81.1 billion, making up 2.9% of Australia’s total GDP.
Yet there is a striking contradiction at the heart of Australia’s tourism success story: we are willing to market our wildlife as an asset, but there is little investment in protecting it.
The government promotes Australia’s wildlife as something unique, precious and worth travelling across the world to see, and it is. But when it comes to protecting the animals that make that tourism possible, government investment is pitiful and, and in too many cases, both federal and government’s wildlife policies actively undermine their survival.
It’s blatant hypocrisy to keep selling Australia’s wildlife as ‘must see’ to the world while, placing no value on protecting it at home.
These tourism ads are played in Australia too, and they severely grate on those who volunteer their days fighting to help wildlife.
If you were to speak to Australians, most will tell you, your only chance to see a koala is in a zoo, and you don’t need to come to Australia to do that. They will also confirm the first kangaroo a tourist is likely to see is a dead one on the side of the road. Hardly a ringing endorsement for international tourists paying thousands of dollars to come and see two of the world’s ‘New Big Five’ animals.
The relationship Australians have with wildlife is also complex and far from the story you see in these glossy promotions. We celebrate kangaroos, koalas and other native animals as symbols of our national identity, yet the tolerance of many can be remarkably conditional.
A possum in the roof or a kangaroo eating from a vegetable garden can quickly cease to be a cherished native animal and become a nuisance that needs to be dealt with.
What is particularly troubling is how easily that attitude can shift, turning wildlife from something we celebrate into something we blame.
In some circumstances, a few clicks online and a government permit can turn a wildlife “problem” into a licence to kill. But the danger doesn’t end with the permit.
These systems depend on governments effectively monitoring who is killing wildlife, how many animals are being killed and whether the conditions of the permit are being followed. That level of oversight simply doesn’t happen in Australia – regulators have been missing in action for decades – so a system intended to manage wildlife impacts, instead leaves protected animals dangerously vulnerable to harm.
I wonder if tourists would think differently about travelling here if they understood how much our wildlife suffers. If they knew that governments issue licences to kill native wildlife, in such a laissez-faire manner, because animals are deemed a nuisance, blamed for damaging infrastructure, accused of over-browsing the very trees they depend on for survival, or simply regarded as an inconvenience to someone’s lifestyle. Those who volunteer their times and their own funds, to step into the void left by governments, see very little when it comes to duty of care from our political representatives.
And I wonder if visitors would feel differently about coming here if they knew that our governments are now killing wildlife to hide their own incompetence and failure to regulate industry.
We saw this with the aerial culling of 1,061 koalas in a national park last year, a government department shooting koalas from helicopters to conceal the consequences of thousands of koalas being displaced after their habitat was logged for nothing more than woodchips for paper production, mainly in China and Japan.
Chinese and Japanese visitors have been consistently in second and six place for international visitor arrivals over nearly a decade. If tourism campaigns highlighted the devastating consequences of logging on kolas, that the rescuers see all too often, my guess is that they would be less likely to come.
And then there are our poor kangaroos. Kangaroos are the most persecuted species in Australia. On the one hand our government says they are protected but they are happy for them to be exterminated in the cruellest of ways, for simply trying to survive.
Large numbers of kangaroos in one place do not necessarily mean the overall population is increasing; they can also indicate that animals have been trapped in shrinking pockets of land with fewer safe places to move.
We recently travelled to NSW via ACT from Victoria. We did not see one kangaroo travelling north through three states. Not even roadkill which, sadly, signals a drastic reduction in numbers.
The same is true for koalas. Across Australia, forests and koala habitat remain under constant pressure from developers, agriculture and forestry corporations, often enabled by government decisions.
Governments could impose stricter regulations but even in states where koalas are listed as endangered, the Australian government has zero desire to impose restrictions on growth and progress.
With no clear end to this destruction, the outlook for koalas is not good. When governments fail to control development, wildlife inevitably pay the price.
In Victoria where koalas are supposedly not yet endangered, a tourist will be hard pressed to find one in the wild. We could almost guarantee you will find one in the southwest of Victoria, in places like Portland but it won’t be a koala living its best life, it will be one sitting dazed on the side of the road after its plantation was logged, or dead on the side of the road.
But beyond the neglect and hypocrisy, there is another way to look at this: money. If we put emotion aside and look at the issue purely in economic terms, what does the Victorian Government actually invest in the kangaroos and koalas that contribute so much to our tourism appeal?
In 2025, the Victorian Government committed at least $2.9 million to kangaroo culling and control: $1.1 million for the Kangaroo Harvesting Program and a further $1.8 million in rebates for farmers to employ professional shooters during drought.
Images: Wildlings Wildlife Shelter
In comparison, in 2025, the Victorian Government offered a measly $310,000 in grants to support the states volunteer wildlife carers, capped at $3,000 per applicant, this would only reach one hundred successful applicants. The contradiction is difficult to ignore; while carers devote their time, energy and often their own savings to caring for wildlife, the government is investing nine times as much in a harvesting program that kills kangaroos, just one of the many species these volunteers care for.
Most difficult to stomach is the fact that some orphaned kangaroos taken in by carers are there because their mothers have been legally shot, leaving their young behind. Carers can then spend the next 18 months caring for and rehabilitating these animals, only to release them back into an environment where they may ultimately be shot themselves.
Now, let’s look at Koala funding.
The Victorian Government allocated $600,000 to Caring for Koalas over two years in the 2025–26 State Budget. Based on its own estimates of 450,000 koalas in Victoria, that amounts to just 67 cents per koala per year to protect and manage one of the state’s most iconic species.
In stark contrast, in 2025 the Victorian Government shot 1,061 koalas from helicopters, supposedly as part of a welfare response. As our report argues, the operation was more likely a cull following the logging of blue gum plantations outside the national park. The operation required two aircraft, costing an estimated $2,000–$3,500 per hour each, for at least five hours a day over 24 consecutive days, alongside two or more professional shooters, two pilots, an on-site veterinarian and other operational staff.
The total cost has never been publicly disclosed, but based on these known requirements, we estimate the operation may have cost the Victorian Government close to $1 million.
At the end of the day, the Victorian government found a million dollars in the budget to shoot our koalas and hide a koala welfare crisis, and yet they only mustered up $600,000 over two years for a Caring for Koalas fund.
Photos: Paul Hilton
To put this all in perspective, Tourism Australia’s current global “Come and Say G’day” campaign starring Robert Irwin, cost Australian taxpayers $130 million, for a two-year marketing campaign targeting major international markets including the US, UK, China, India and Japan.
So, while Australia’s governments put their hands out for the $40.9 billion 9.2 million international visitors spend in the country, they won’t put their hands in their pockets to provide any useful funding to protect the wildlife these visitors are coming to see.
If you are planning to visit Australia to see two of the world’s ‘New Big Five’ animals, Kangaroo and Koala, we felt these facts are something international visitors should know to help them best decide how and where to spend their tourisms dollars.
You may want to think twice before you decide on Australia.
