Nearly half a billion animals have been killed in Australia’s wildfires
Ecologists from the University of Sydney now estimate 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles have been lost since September with the figure likely to continue to soar. Devastating fires have ripped through the states of Victoria and New South Wales in the past couple of days alone, leaving several people dead or missing. Scores of homes along Australia’s east coast have been razed to the ground leaving thousands of residents stranded and many forced to take shelter in the only safe place left available to them, the ocean. Harrowing pictures and videos have captured kangaroos desperately attempting to flee great walls of flames while rescue teams have been met by the charred bodies of thousands of koalas. Others reported seeing cockatoos falling dead out of trees and farmers have fled only to return to their burned land and find it littered with the bodies of livestock.
The world has struggled to take in the scale of destruction caused by Australia’s worst wildfire season on record, with pictures of the sky turning a blazing red likened to apocalyptic horror films. Koalas have been among the hardest hit of Australia’s native animals because they are slow moving and only eat leaves from the eucalyptus tree, which are filled with oil, making them highly flammable. Up to 8000 of the animals — a third of the entire koala population of the NSW mid-north coast — are believed to have been killed in less than four months. Nature Conservation Council ecologist Mark Graham told the Australian parliament that the fires have burned ‘so hot and so fast’ that there has been ‘significant mortality’ of animals, particularly in trees. He added: ‘There is such a big area now that is still on fire and still burning that we will probably never find the bodies.’ Animal rescue volunteer Tracy Burgess said her centre had seen less animals than expected coming in for treatment, which she decribed as ‘worrying’.
She told Reuters: ‘Our concern is that they don’t come into care because they’re not there anymore, basically.’ Stand Up for Nature, an alliance of 13 organisations, is calling for an immediate halt on logging of native forests in NSW until the impacts of the catastrophic bushfires on species and habitat are understood. In an open letter, it warned that the impact of the fires is ‘extreme and ongoing’ and the scale of the loss will ‘probably never be known’ but will certainly be in the millions. The alliance acknowledged a moratorium could have impacts on native forest timber industry workers and have called on the government to support them in the meantime. Environment Minister Sussan Ley said true animal death figures would not be known until ‘the fires have calmed down and a proper assessment can be made’. Meanwhile, as tens of thousands of people have been left homeless by the fires in New South Wales, tales of generosity and kindness have begun to emerge.
A sign outside one home in the town of Pambula in NSW invited ‘evacuees’ to come in for food, a shower, or ‘help in general’. Anita Glover, 43, posted a picture of the notice that she spotted while out shopping in her hometown. She said: ‘I just thought it was great, the generosity, and people thinking of other people that have been evacuated.’ Towns in NSW and Victoria are said to be running out of fuel and water, with shops selling out of basic supplies. Helicopters will help evacuate 4,000 people stranded at Mallacoota in Victoria’s East Gippsland where families have been sheltering on beaches and the largest ever relocation of people from the New South Wales South Coast is taking place. Telephone lines and the internet are down in some isolated towns and communities have been told to boil water which may not be safe to drink. Weather forecasters have warned conditions are likely to get worse again on Saturday with strong winds and temperatures expected to reach 46°C.
