Millions of Animals Dead or Injured in Australia's Wildfires

There's no easy reading here. If you are able to donate to Wildlife Victoria's emergency fund, to help the injured survivors, many of whom are also without habitat now and at risk of starvation, in addition to being at risk from their injuries, please click here.

"Australia's Animals Scorched in Wildfires" from the Associated Press, via Huffington Post:

SYDNEY — Kangaroo corpses lay scattered by the roadsides while wombats that survived the wildfire's onslaught emerged from their underground burrows to find blackened earth and nothing to eat.

Wildlife rescue officials on Wednesday worked frantically to help the animals that made it through Australia's worst-ever wildfires but they said millions of animals likely perished in the inferno.

Scores of kangaroos have been found around roads, where they were overwhelmed by flames and smoke while attempting to flee, said Jon Rowdon, president of the rescue group Wildlife Victoria.

Kangaroos that survived are suffering from burned feet, a result of their territorial behavior. After escaping the initial flames, the creatures - which prefer to stay in one area - likely circled back to their homes, singeing their feet on the smoldering ground.

"It's just horrific," said Neil Morgan, president of the Statewide Wildlife Rescue Emergency Service in Victoria, the state where the raging fires were still burning. "It's disaster all around for humans and animals as well."

Some wombats that hid in their burrows managed to survive the blazes, but those that are not rescued face a slow and certain death as they emerge to find their food supply gone, said Pat O'Brien, president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia.

The official human death toll stood at 181 from weekend's deadly fires and authorities said it would exceed 200. While the scope of the wildlife devastation was still unclear, it was likely to be enormous, Rowdon said.

"There's no doubt across that scale of landscape and given the intensity of the fires, millions of animals would have been killed," he said.

Read the rest at Huffington Post here.

In a short post titled "Apocalypse?" one Australian blogger wrote,

Australia is currently in a pretty bad state.

North Queensland is under water. 63% of the state has been declared a disaster zone--that's an area larger than the state of South Australia. It didn't rain yesterday, and it's dry today (except a little burst of rain just after sunrise), but more rain is predicted for tomorrow. We're fine, just a bit sick of gloomy weather and fighting a battle against the mold that's growing on every surface, and the ants who have moved indoors to get out of the rain. A lot of people are not okay, since their homes are flooded. A lot of cattle have been shot because they are stranded by rising flood waters. And a few people have drowned when their cars are flooded.

Much worse off are the Victorians, who not only have had to suffer unbearable heat--but are now either burnt out or at risk of fire. Nearly 200 people are confirmed dead so far, which apparently makes this Australia's worst recorded natural disaster.

TreeHugger reports on the likely climate-change link, as does the Associated Press in an article that begins, "Australia may be getting a glimpse of its globally warmed future." Remember when I noted in yesterday's post that global warming is an animal rights issue--because eating animals = global warming = destruction of habitat and death of even more animals? Well, here's a devastating example of how connected it all is.

Photos: AP