Race to save animals in fire-hit 'Aussie Galapagos'

KANGAROO ISLAND • On an island famously described as "Australia's Galapagos" for its unique and abundant wildlife, rescuers are racing to save rare animals in a bush fire-ravaged landscape.

The charred forest floor on Kangaroo Island is littered with corpses of animals incinerated by the blazes that swept through two weeks ago.

Unprecedented fires across swathes of southern and eastern Australia in the past five months have killed an estimated billion animals. And with forests and coastal areas roughly the size of Portugal ravaged by fire, environmentalists fear the blazes will drive some species to extinction.

On Kangaroo Island - home to unique koalas, the critically endangered mouse-like dunnart and many threatened plants - concerns are particularly acute.

Amid the stench of rotting animal flesh, rescuers are combing the island's Flinders Chase National Park looking for injured, lost and starving animals.

"When we found this area we never thought anything could have survived, but we have pulled survivors out of there every day," Ms Kelly Donithan, a Humane Society International crisis response specialist, told Agence France-Presse while on patrol this week.

But with huge parts of the animals' habitats destroyed, the chances of many surviving are fading by the day.

"Time is of the essence," Ms Donithan said. "Every day that goes by, the animals get weaker and weaker and their organs are becoming more susceptible to irreparable damage."

Kangaroo Island, a short ferry ride from Adelaide in South Australia, was a popular tourist destination because of its pristine landscape and wildlife.

A top concern for the rescuers is the Kangaroo Island dunnart, a small grey marsupial which was already facing extinction before the blazes. "We think there were about 500 of them left (before the fires)," Zoos South Australia chief executive Elaine Bensted told national broadcaster ABC.

The rescuers say it is difficult to find small species that have survived so their focus has mainly been on larger animals. These include the local koala population, the only one in Australia entirely free of chlamydia - a sexually transmitted infection also found in humans that is fatal to the marsupials.

They are even more crucial now that huge numbers of koalas are feared to have died in the bush fires on the Australian mainland.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE