"Exactly how small do we want the population to be before we push the panic button?" he said.
Dan Lunney, a senior research scientist with the New South Wales (NSW) state Department of Environment and Conservation, said koalas cover roughly the same territory as they did 20 years ago.
In some areas -- Victoria state and Kangaroo Island in South Australia -- koala numbers are growing. But in New South Wales, which tracks the east coast of Australia, the koala is a recognized threatened species.
"That means if nothing is done about it the population will continue to decline," he said. "The issue is not how many there are; but it's whether they are declining or not."
Lunney said while the Victoria bushfires would have killed large numbers of animals, as long as some koalas survived and sufficient bush regrowth is maintained, the population will recover.
"Koalas can take a fair bit. That's why we've still got them," he said. "But they do have a threshold at which they can't continue."
Lunney said populations were at most risk of dying out in areas where new houses were being built, putting them at risk of death by cars and dogs.
"Koalas in the NSW coastal areas are the most vulnerable because that's where the human population is increasing," he said.
"As the human population increases on the North Coast, the cost is coming out in the survival of koalas. Road kill -- it's a common way to see wildlife," Lunney said.
Drought, fire and flood have always been part of the Australian environment, "but when your habitat is fragmented, all these things are exacerbated," said Erna Walraven, senior curator at Sydney's Taronga Zoo.
Walraven sees the koala as a flagship species, with the health of their populations serving as an indicator of the wider health of the wildlife of the bush, including bandicoots and wallabies.
"My view is that there are a range of animals under that five, six, seven kilogram range that really [are] quite vulnerable to increased development and land clearing on the coast," she said. "I think that the koala is in there with a big suite of other species, native Australian icons, that are under threat."
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