Kangaroo Island is a popular Australian tourist destination and wildlife park off of Australia’s southeast coast. It teams with such biodiversity, that the island has proudly gained itself the reputation as “Little Noah’s Ark”. Sadly, in recent weeks, Kangaroo Island has succumbed to massive bushfire damage, decimating over half of the 1,700-square-mile island. In the past week alone, raging bushfires have undone decades of careful conservation work on Kangaroo Island—and killed hundreds of millions—to nearly 1 BILLION— Australian-native animals.
Tragically, Kangaroo Island is now black and smoldering—a grim scene closely resembling a true apocalypse. Burned animal carcasses litter the shoulders of roads that run across the island’s rugged landscape.
In a desperate search to save any surviving island wildlife, Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park animal rescue teams have begun braving the elements to walk in human chains and search tree by tree for life. Please make a lifesaving donation to Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park where your vital contribution will provide these emergency crew members and passionate animal caregivers with the funds they need to collect the surviving wildlife and purchase necessary medical supplies and food to nurse them back to health. Most importantly, your donation will quite possibly save Australia’s remaining koala population from near extinction.
What makes the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park’s lifesaving efforts so vital is that Kangaroo Island is the ONLY PLACE on the planet where the koala population is clean of widespread life-threatening chlamydia disease that has long threatened the koala species. Kangaroo Island was once considered the koala’s “insurance policy” against their extinction, and now 80% of their Kangaroo Island habitat has been decimated by these recent bushfires.
Typically, when bushfires come, koalas intuitively scale up trees and curl into a ball waiting for the fire to pass. However, with recent bushfires being so incredibly intense, most koalas have been cremated or have fallen into the fire from heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation. It is feared nearly 30,000 koalas have perished. But, emergency rescuers are determined to save any and all survivors. On the rare occasion a rescuer finds a surviving animal, it is hailed as a sheer miracle! “We just get out every morning and look for lone survivors,” said rescue worker, Shona Fisher, 59, who has rescued more than 70 koalas with her husband since the fires began.
With the forests still smoldering and burnt to a crisp, the fauna is burned as well, so no food remains for any surviving wildlife to eat. So, it’s a race against time to capture surviving wildlife, as most of these animals will still parish as they are forced to endure phase two of the bushfire apocalypse: a slow, lonely and painful death of dehydration and starvation.
Once a surviving animal is found, it is immediately rushed to the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park pop-up tent where emergency crews are waiting to tend to their health and feed them. Veterinary workers tend to survivors with medical equipment which include IV drip bags, bandages, gauze, monitoring equipment and saucers filled with iodine. Injured koalas line their large tent, nestled in simple laundry baskets with bandaged paws and badly burned rumps. Thanks to these passionate emergency crews and their lifesaving efforts, they are still alive!!!
According to local Zoo caregivers, rescued koalas may cost thousands of dollars to be nursed back to health over the course of many months. This is worth every penny because the future fate of koalas literally now hangs in the balance with the surviving animals being tended at their Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park.
Please make a lifesaving donation to Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park where your contribution will directly provide the necessary medical equipment, food, and vital items that these passionate caregivers need to nurse Australia’s iconic creatures back to health. Through your donation, you will, quite possibly, be saving koalas from near extinction, today.