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Vets treat injured koalas in bushfire zone as wildlife death toll rises

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Vets and volunteers are tending to injured wildlife as the number of animals killed by bushfires raging across multiple states continues to grow.

On Sunday, Zoos Victoria announced that its veterinarian staff had been granted permision to enter the state’s bushfire zones and had begun “the brave task of treating countless injured wildlife”.

Staff from Healesville Sanctuary travelled overnight to provide veterinary support and wildlife triage at Mallacoota in East Gippsland.

An injured koala being treated in Mallacoota. Photo: Zoos Victoria

Healesville Sanctuary vet Leanne Wicker described signs of hope among the ashes.

Despite their injuries and trauma, the bravery shown by the koalas and wildlife at Mallacoota is inspiring,” Dr Wicker said.

The unprecedented bushfires are threatening the future of Australia’s wild koalas, with one of the nation’s last healthy colonies ravaged over the weekend.

Half the population of Kangaroo Island’s koalas is feared to have been killed after bushfires on the South Australian island intensified on Friday.

ABC journalist Lucy Carter spoke to the owners of Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park where injured koalas are being cared for.

“They estimate that at least half the island’s koalas have died, many many more horrifically injured,” Ms Carter wrote.

“The island’s koalas were Australia’s ‘insurance population’ as they were not affected by chlamydia [sic].”

In July, researchers from the University of Adelaide published a study in  Scientific Reports identifying Kangaroo Island as  Australia’s last large, healthy, chlamydia-free population of koalas.

“The impact of chlamydia on populations of koalas in parts of Australia is devastating, with high levels of severe disease and death, and common infertility,” study lead Jessica Fabijan said at the time.

This last chlamydia-free population holds significant importance as insurance for the future of the species.

“We may need our Kangaroo Island koalas to re-populate other declining populations.”

In late December, the federal government’s environment minister Sussan Ley revealed that nearly a third of koalas on the New South Wales mid-north coast were believed to have been killed in the ongoing bushfires because “up to 30 per cent of their habitat has been destroyed”.

“We’ll know more when the fires are calmed down and a proper assessment can be made,” Ms Ley told the ABC.

Habitat destruction could cause koalas to become exctinct in the wild. Photo: AAP

In 2018, a report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Nature Conservation Council (NCC) found that koalas were on track to be extinct in New South Wales by 2050 if the rate of land clearing was to continue.

“We see koala habitat disappearing at an alarming rate,” Conservation biologist Martin Taylor said.

“If we project that forward, it could be mid-century by the time we may have no more wild koalas in NSW.”

Bushfires wipe out half a billion animals

An estimated half a billion animals have been killed in the bushfires so far, but the full impact is “impossible to determine at this early stage”, Zoos Victoria chief executive Jenny Gray said.

“Across the nation’s bushfire-affected areas, it is estimated that as many as 500 million animals, including critically endangered species, have already perished in the bushfires,” she said.

University of Sydney ecologist Chris Dickman recently estimated that 480 million animals had been killed in New South Wales alone since bushfires started in September.

The estimate is a conservative one, and “the true loss of animal life is likely to be much higher than 480 million”, Professor Dickman said.

The figure includes mammals, birds and reptiles and does not include insects, bats or frogs.

“Many of the affected animals are likely to have been killed directly by the fires, with others succumbing later due to the depletion of food and shelter resources and predation from introduced feral cats and red foxes,” Professor Dickman said.

“NSW’s wildlife is seriously threatened and under increasing pressure from a range of threats, including land clearing, exotic pests and climate change.”

Over the last 200 years, 34 species and subspecies of native mammals have become extinct in Australia, the highest rate of loss for any region in the world, Professor Dickman said.

In May, a landmark report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that life on Earth is being wiped out at an unprecedented rate and humans are to blame.

The current rate of global species extinction is now tens to hundreds of times higher compared to the average over the past 10 million years, IPBES found.

About one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, more than ever before in human history.

We are now living through what scientists say is only the sixth mass extinction in the world’s 4.5 billion-year history, and the rate of extinctions is accelerating.

IPBES chair Robert Watson said the health of ecosystems on which “we and all other species depend” is deteriorating “more rapidly than ever”.

“It is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global,” Sir Watson said.

“Through ‘transformative change’, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably.”

Where to donate to help injured wildlife

The post Vets treat injured koalas in bushfire zone as wildlife death toll rises appeared first on The New Daily.


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