Australian bushfires kill one in three koalas
Australian bushfires are travelling immense distances before people can defend homes or flee
An area of New South Wales that is home to a sizeable part of Australia’s koala population may have lost 30 per cent of the species in the bushfire crisis. Sussan Ley, the environment minister, said a vast tract of koala habitat had been destroyed. There had been an estimated 28,000 of the creatures in the region. Eight people have died and 1,000 homes destroyed in the state by the fires, which have also hit Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia. Page 17
ONE of Australia’s most famous animals is now a threatened species, with the country’s bushfire crisis wiping out huge numbers of koalas.
Sussan Ley, the environment minister, said yesterday that the midnorth coast of New South Wales (NSW), home to a sizeable part of Australia’s koala population, may have lost 30 per cent of the species.
In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Ms Ley said a vast tract of koala habitat had been destroyed in the region.
Before the fires, it was estimated that up to 28,000 koalas lived in the region.
Eight people have died in New South Wales alone, and about 3.4million hectares and almost 1,000 homes have been lost to the long-running bushfire crisis. Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia have also faced large, emergency-level fires.
Early yesterday, the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) issued a “very high fire danger rating” for many parts of the state.
In a statement, the RFS said there were “almost 1,300 firefighters in the field. Over 70 bush and grass fires, 33 uncontained”. Later, it warned that there would be “widespread very high fire danger” today.
South Australia’s Country Fire Service (CFS) assistant chief officer Brenton Eden told The Advertiser that the state was extremely dry and the conditions and coming heatwave posed a serious threat.
“We are seeing fire behaviour across SA, Victoria and NSW that we haven’t seen and experienced for a long time… These fires are now travelling immense distances and covering an enormous amount of the landscape before people are prepared either to defend their property or to get out,” Mr Eden said.
“Cudlee Creek has been the most classic example recently, together with Yorketown, of fires that have started from a very small ignition source… The CFS responded within minutes to them and had no capacity to bring them under control.”
Mr Eden warned that the two fires that have burnt through a total of 42,300 hectares of land at Cudlee Creek in the Adelaide Hills, and in Duncan, on Kangaroo Island, would continue to burn for weeks. “It’s tinder dry and ready to burn and that’s what we’re seeing at the moment,” he said.
As the crisis continues there is renewed pressure on Scott Morrison, the prime minister, to reform Australia’s firefighting services and infrastructure.
Weeks after he rejected calls to transform Australia’s largely volunteer bush firefighting services into professional organisations, one of Mr Morrison’s own senior ministers has called for change.
As three large fires raged in his constituency of Gippsland, Victoria, veterans’ affairs minister and Nationals MP Darren Chester said this week that there is strong support among his constituents to pay volunteers when they worked for extended periods.
Veteran NSW fire fighter Brendan Hurley, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, said: “I’ve been a firefighter for 20 years and these fires have delivered the worst conditions I’ve ever faced.
“We have been responding to bushfires since the end of September and it is fair to say that as we move further into the campaign fatigue is setting in.”
A week after the uproar over Mr Morrison’s Hawaiian holiday, New South Wales emergency services minister David Elliott is leaving the country for a trip to the UK and France. Mr Elliott said in a statement that he would return home, “if the bushfire situation should demand it”.