Stepping up to the plate: Australia works to restore wildlife impacted by wildfires

The tragic wildfires during the 2019-2020 Australian summers are estimated to have killed or displaced nearly 3 billion native animals.¹ In a recent dvm360^® interview, Phil Tucak, BSc, BVMS, shared that since then, organizations have provided assistance to rehabilitate affected areas and have undertaken conservation programs to help impacted threatened species.

“On Kangaroo Island, various organizations such as the Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife have been working with the national Australian Wildlife Conservancy organization to develop…the Western River Refuge and this is really important for 1 species in particular which is a critically endangered little small mammal called the Kangaroo Island Dunnart," Tucak said.

"There’s been promising progress already…and it will also benefit several other wildlife species as well,” he added.

Tucak then noted that Sydney and Victoria were also impacted by the fires and have been receiving help from several organizations including NSW Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service Inc. (WIRES).

“There [was] a lot of donations at the time of the fires and so [WIRES has] been progressively funding different initiatives to help various wildlife conservation projects and that’s been ranging from helping wildlife groups to [animal] caretakers to veterinarians…and trying to set up a lot of systems so that way if anything like this happened again, that there’d be a lot more support in place,” he said.

For more of Tucak’s knowledge on how Australia is restoring its wildlife, watch the full video below.

Reference

1. Australia’s fires ‘killed or harmed three billion animals.’ BBC News. July 28, 2020. Accessed September 16, 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53549936