On a remote Australian isle, rescuers race to save koalas, kangaroos and other animals
Koalas wait for treatment at the wildlife park. The 50-acre property, surrounded by burn scars, was untouched by the blazes. Water is dropped on a blaze on Kangaroo Island. Fires overran nearly half of the 1,700-square-mile island. A koala recovers on Kangaroo Island. Some koalas are in such bad shape they uncharacteristically move toward humans, either unable to see or starved and disoriented.
The endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart, a mouse-like marsupial, relies on low-lying vegetation for protection from birds and feral cats. That largely is gone, as is most of the home of the glossy black cockatoo. Much of the landscape is black and smoldering. The carcasses of animals litter the shoulders of the roads that run across the island’s rugged landscape. Most are dead, and others are in such bad shape they uncharacteristically move toward humans, either unable to see or starved and disoriented.
But then the fires came. Two grew moderately out of lightning strikes on Dec. 20 and were on their way to being controlled when a third lightning strike on Dec. 30 created a monster blaze. Within five days, it consumed about a third of the island and, according to Mitchell, about 80% of the koalas’ island habitat.
Local farmers also took a big hit, although the larger operations may be in a position to bounce back. That prospect concerns many fire ecologists, who have long preached that fires are beneficial to native flora and fauna in California and other Western states, where ecosystems have adapted to regular blazes.“We have a saying that pyro-diversity begets eco-diversity,” said Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist with the Ashland, Ore.-based Geos Institute, who has studied forest-fire ecology extensively in the western United States.
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