SYDNEY — Kangaroo corpses lay scattered by the roadsides while wombats that survived the wildfire’s onslaught emerged from their underground burrows to find blackened earth and nothing to eat.
Wildlife rescue officials on Wednesday worked frantically to help the animals that made it through Australia’s worst-ever wildfires, but they said millions of animals probably perished in the inferno.
Scores of kangaroos have been found around roads, where they were overwhelmed by flames and smoke while attempting to flee, said Jon Rowdon, president of the rescue group Wildlife Victoria.
Kangaroos that survived are suffering from burned feet.
“It’s just horrific,” said Neil Morgan, president of the Statewide Wildlife Rescue Emergency Service in Victoria, the state where the raging fires were still burning. “It’s disaster all around for humans and animals as well.”
Some wombats that hid in their burrows managed to survive the blazes, but those that are not rescued face a slow and certain death as they emerge to find their food supply gone, said Pat O’Brien, president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia.
The official human death toll stood at 181 from the weekend’s deadly fires and authorities said it would exceed 200. While the scope of the wildlife devastation was still unclear, it was likely to be enormous, Rowdon said.
“There’s no doubt across that scale of landscape and given the intensity of the fires, millions of animals would have been killed,” he said.
Hundreds of burned, stressed and dehydrated animals — including kangaroos, koalas, lizards and birds — have already arrived at shelters across the scorched region. Rescuers have doled out antibiotics, pain relievers and fluids to the critters in a bid to keep them comfortable, but some of the severely injured were euthanized to spare any more suffering.
“We’ve got a wallaby joey at the moment that has crispy fried ears because he stuck his head out of his mum’s pouch and lost all his whiskers and cooked up his nose,” Rowdon said. “They’re the ones your hearts really go out to.”
One furry survivor has emerged a star: a koala, nicknamed Sam by her rescuers, was found moving gingerly on scorched paws by a fire patrol on Sunday.
Firefighter David Tree offered the animal a bottle of water, which she eagerly accepted — a moment captured in a photograph seen around the world.
Sam is being treated at the Mountain Ash Wildlife Shelter in Rawson, where she has attracted the attention of a male koala, nicknamed Bob, manager Coleen Wood said. The two have been inseparable, with Bob keeping a protective watch over his new friend, she said.
