Since Black Sunday In 2019 And Later Firestorms, Burnout Hitting Australian Veteranarians And Wildlife Rescuers
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The fire at Bairnsdale, Victoria, was so intense and dynamic that it created its own weather patterns, forming thunderstorms kilometres ahead, with lightning strikes that were igniting new fires. It would burn for nearly four months. “The damage was horrific” Pulis says. “It was like walking on the moon. There was just not a blade of anything left, the trees were black matchsticks. The ground was really, really thick ash, it was so unstable. You just can’t fathom it.” In December 2019, in many parts of Australia, the sky turned black. In the following weeks, unprecedented bushfires killed 33 people, destroyed thousands of homes, killed about 3 billion animals and razed 24m hectares of wildlife habitat. For those who devote their lives to caring for animals, these days will never be forgotten.
In the days before help arrived, wildlife carer Sue Johns at Mallacoota had a lounge room full of koalas burnt by the fires – “koalas everywhere”. But for Pulis there were few survivors. “Things like the rednecked wallaby and Bennett’s wallaby were basically wiped out.” Dr Jade Hammer, a vet at the Main Street veterinary clinic at Bairnsdale, says the heat of the fire killed thousands of ground animals. If the fires were low, koalas could climb higher up a tree if the canopy was still intact; but Hammer treated many of these survivors for smoke inhalation. “The smoke was so thick that quite a lot of animals were coming in with respiratory distress.”
Vets are not paid to treat wildlife. But Hammer and his colleagues kept working, even when they didn’t know if their own houses had survived. They worked long hours for months looking after native and nonnative species, including cattle. “They would appear OK initially but their hooves were burnt. Later, the hooves would fall off so [the cattle] needed to be euthanised.” The work of vets and wildlife carers did not end when the fire front passed; many animals perished in the fires, but many others survived with injuries and faced food and water shortages and loss of habitat, at least for a while.
Marcie Lash, a vet nurse who was deployed to the fires near Cooma in NSW by Vets Beyond Borders, says: “A lot of animals survive for weeks and weeks with very little.” They are not doing very well by the time you find them.” During search and rescue efforts, the level of fear among the animals made things “very difficult”, she says. “You have to remember, we’re dealing with wild animals,” Lash says. “The search and rescue [team] I was involved in was using a sedation method. The people, at least, knew what was coming and that was terrifying. The animals didn’t know what was coming and maybe that was more terrifying.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/05/australia-black-summer-bushfires-vets-wildlife
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