Australia’s Bushfires

A koala that has come down from a tree after a bush fire passed through, sits on the burnt ground. He/she was subsequentially collected and taken in for a health check.Location: Gelantipy, Victoria, Australia.

An anesthetised female koala is treated for full thickness burns to all her feet, the result of walking on hot ground following bushfires. Injuries like this mean they cannot climb a tree so will starve and dehydrate - which also means the wounds wo

After a health check at a mobile wildlife triage centre, wildlife rescuer and carer Lorna cradles ‘River’ before taking him home. River was found walking all alone during the bushfires a few weeks earlier near Twin Rivers district - hence his name. H

A female koala in care for burns to her feet is given a supplemental feed of eucalyptus leaf puree by veterinarian at a mobile wildlife triage centre. The koala (and her daughter) came in four days earlier with burns to her feet.Location: Bairnsdale,

Rena feeds ‘Link’ and Satin’, two orphaned eastern grey kangaroos (Macropus gigantea), in her mother’s shed after evacuating them from her wildlife shelter in Goongerah (Victoria) when bushfires threatened and then destroyed it.Location: Sarsfield, V

A veterinary nurse counts the number of faecal pellets from a koala in care for burns treatment at a mobile wildlife triage centre. The number of pellets gives health professionals a good idea of how well their digestion is going – something that can

During Australia’s 2019/20 summer, over 30 million acres burned (12 times the recent amazon fires and more than ever before). The intensity – defined by how hot much heat was generated – and the severity – defined by the amount of damage to vegetation – was at record levels. Wet forests burned, rain forests burned, and experts say some habitats will never be the same. Adding to this were the horrific animal welfare impacts – with over a billion animals burning to death, hundreds of millions of animals suffering and dying from exposure, starvation, injury or dehydration.

In the state of Victoria, one area that was severely impacted was East Gippsland. Dealing with this wildlife trauma, and trying to help those animals that survived, were a range of people from professional wildlife officers, to part-time rescuers and carers.

This series of images hopes out to show three things:
a) a snapshot of the impacts from just a few days after the main fires hit, to a few weeks afterwards, where rain had fallen and some plant life has started to regrow.
b) the diverse range of people caring for a range of animals but with two things in common – all impacted by the fires and all caring deeply about wildlife.
c) Some of the extraordinary efforts that went in to rescuing, treating and releasing them back into the wild.