Sam the Koala (the very much blogged Koala who was being given water from a bottle by a CFA volunteer).
Carer Jenny Shaw said Sam suffered burns on her paws and was in a lot of pain, but was on the road to recovery. She was put on an IV drip and is on antibiotics and pain relief treatment.
“She is lovely - very docile - and she has already got an admirer. A male koala keeps putting his arms around her,” Ms Shaw said.On a wildlife tragic note:
Fire may have killed a million native animals
However, a wildlife expert says more than a million native animals may have perished in Victoria’s fire inferno.
The massive effort to rescue animals caught in the fire has begun with triage centres set up to assess injured wildlife at staging posts at Kilmore, Whittlesea and Redesdale near Bendigo.
The animals are then being treated and assessed by vets at nearby shelters, who make the agonising decision about which ones need to be euthanased.
Those animals still able to may wait several weeks before walking out of fire-affected forest, Gayle Chappell from the Hepburn Wildlife Shelter said.
Ms Chappell is among those working to rescue the animals and says the extent of the devastation may never be known.
“It (the animal death toll) will be in the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions,” Ms Chappell said.
“We are not just talking the animals we are familiar with, there are gliders and all sorts of possums, antechinus (a mouse-like marsupial), bandicoots, birds - there is so much wildlife.
“It is devastating, the actual size of the destruction is devastating to a number of wildlife populations.”
It is feared endangered populations of gliders, owls and lizards may be among the dead.
via news.com.au
This is so heart breaking.
