Do koalas live in the ACT? Ecologists are on a mission to find out

But Jaimie Hopkins, a fauna ecologist with the ACT government, is searching for another sound: a koala bellow.

"It's thought that if there are koalas in the area, the males should bellow, which is their sexual advertisement signal to females," she said.

Koalas are listed as endangered in the ACT and, according to the government, there are no known populations within the territory.

But Dr Hopkins believes the furry marsupial may be living under the radar.

She's running a project that aims to determine whether koala populations are present in the ACT, a finding that she says would be significant for the territory.

"Koalas are what we call an umbrella species," Dr Hopkins said.

"So if you find them in an area, it often means that the area is productive and doing really well and you can assume that potentially other species are doing well also.

"It would [also] be a significant finding for the Ngunnawal people and for their roles as caretaker of country ... we know that the Ngunnawal people do really want to see the landscapes in a condition that they were prior to European settlement."

European settlement, bushfires, land clearing and disease have had a significant impact on koala numbers in the region.

Last year, the federal government declared koalas as endangered in Queensland, NSW, and the ACT, a move long-called for by animal welfare groups.

Tidbindilla Nature Reserve runs a koala breeding program and koalas are occasionally sighted after crossing over from NSW.

Dr Hopkins believes close proximity to populations in NSW and a good habitat in the ACT means the national icon might also be found living within the territory.

She was using passive acoustic monitoring, which involves leaving a timed sound recorder out in the forest, to determine whether there were any koalas in the area.

"It's possible that the sightings that we do see here are individuals wandering over from NSW, but there's also a chance that they could be coming from small populations that we have here in the ACT," she said.

"We know that we've got beautiful habitat here for koalas, so it's really quite possible that we do have them. It's just that nobody's really had a good look."

The project forms part of the ACT government's conservation plan for the Koala - or Gula in Ngunnawal language - and will see the government also work with traditional custodians to monitor sites for the animals.

Dr Hopkins said if they detect koalas living in the ACT, the next steps would include learning what conditions the marsupials prefer.

"What it also means is we can do some mapping under climate change scenarios and we can see which areas are predicted to stay relatively good in terms of koala habitat in the future and really look to maintain those areas," she said.

"We can also look at things like trying to improve connectivity among populations, so potentially trying to enhance movement corridors so that it's easier for animals to migrate between areas.

"And if we find that there really aren't many individuals in the ACT or there aren't any at all, captive breeding and translocation is something that we may consider further down the track."