800 million killed

At last, more attention of the reporting is directed at the wildlife that falls victim to the major bushfires Down Under. It is not enough to have survived a fire if all food and sources of water have also gone.

Bushfires have always accompanied Australian summers, often with devastating local effects. Yet over the last decades they have been intensifying, in step with increasing temperatures and drought. 2019 was both the hottest-ever year and the driest. It was the first time both parameters have coincided since records began in 1900. Hitherto, news coverage has mostly concentrated on human victims and homes lost, with the occasional pathetic picture of pets and livestock that also failed to escape. This year is different.

Twenty-five years ago I drove up the Birdsville Track in the South Australian Outback, following the old cattle drovers’ trail into Western Queen ...