DragonI

Nearly 500 million animals killed in Australian bushfires

Around 480 million animals are feared to have died in the bushfires sweeping Australia, including nearly a third of the koalas in New South Wales's main habitat.

www.standard.co.uk

Ecologists at the University of Sydney estimate around 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles have been killed, directly or indirectly, by the devastating blazes since they began in September, The Times reported.

This includes almost 8,000 koalas, which are believed to have burnt to death on the state’s mid-north coast.

The region, which lies around 240 miles north of Sydney, is home to the largest number of Australia’s koalas, with a population of up to 28,000.

Federal environment minister Sussan Ley told ABC "up to 30 per cent of the population in that region" may have been killed, because around 30 per cent of their habitat has been destroyed.

More than 100 fires continue to rage across the country, having so far consumed more than five million hectares of land.

Dedicated workers at the The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital reportedly treated 72 badly burnt animals on Christmas Day.

A Gofundme page for the hospital has received more than £1.6million ($2million AUD) since September - the largest single amount raised on the site in Australian history, website Newshub reported.

Read this the below link[1]. Which is a personal account of what's happening and 100% aligned with what I've seen while driving in the outback.

People are leaving. The land is no longer habitable to human or animal life. Trying to write off the last 3 years as 'seasonal phenomena' is fucking insane.

Significant chunk of brumby population died[2] no one's ever seen this before.

Wildlife is unable to reproduce because of the heat and drought[3]

The total wildlife death toll is estimated at 500m for this year alone[4]

None of this is precedented. None of this is part of the 'natural cycle'. This continent is experiencing a mass extinction event and the only reason it's not all over the news is because all of the news outlets are owned by Murdoch the coal mogul who probably understands climate change but will continue funding the public denial of it just because it makes a buck.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ecaqu4/australia...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-23/mass-brumby-death-dis...

[3] https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/cattle-hav...

[4] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/australian-bushfires-n...

Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds

The huge loss is a tragedy in itself but also threatens the survival of civilisation, say the world’s leading scientists

www.theguardian.com|Damian Carrington

Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.

The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.

“We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff. If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done.”

“Nature contributes to human wellbeing culturally and spiritually, as well as through the critical production of food, clean water, and energy, and through regulating the Earth’s climate, pollution, pollination and floods,”

The biggest cause of wildlife losses is the destruction of natural habitats, much of it to create farmland. Three-quarters of all land on Earth is now significantly affected by human activities. Killing for food is the next biggest cause – 300 mammal species are being eaten into extinction – while the oceans are massively overfished, with more than half now being industrially fished.

A picture of loneliness: you are looking at the last male northern white rhino | Jonathan Jones

The image of Sudan the rhino, surrounded by the armed guards who protect him from poachers, shows how little humans have learned since the ice age

www.theguardian.com|Jonathan Jones

What is it like to look at the very last of something? To contemplate the passing of a unique wonder that will soon vanish from the face of the earth? You are seeing it. Sudan is the last male northern white rhino on the planet. If he does not mate successfully soon with one of two female northern white rhinos at Ol Pejeta conservancy, there will be no more of their kind, male or female, born anywhere. And it seems a slim chance, as Sudan is getting old at 42 and breeding efforts have so far failed. Apart from these three animals there are only two other northern white rhinos in the world, both in zoos, both female.

It seems an image of human tenderness that Sudan is lovingly guarded by armed men who stand vigilantly and caringly with him. But of course it is an image of brutality. Even at this last desperate stage in the fate of the northern white rhino, poachers would kill Sudan if they could and hack off his horn to sell it on the Asian medicine market.

...

Human beings – we always kill the things we love. We have been doing so since the ice age. There are beautiful pictures of European woolly rhinos in caves in France, that were painted up to 30,000 years ago. These ancient relatives of Sudan share his heroic bulk, mighty power and paradoxical air of gentleness. A woolly rhino in Chauvet cave seems agile and young, a creature full of life. But the same people who painted such sensitive portraits of ice age rhinos helped to kill them off. As climate turned against the woolly megafauna with the end of the last ice age, human spears probably delivered the coup de grace.