A video has been posted on Reddit that shows two cousins travelling around one of the areas worst hit by the Australian bushfires collecting koalas and taking them to safety in their car.
During the Black Summer, as Australia was being devastated by the horrendous bushfires, with half a billion animals and perhaps entire species wiped out, there are still a few positive stories, and this is one of them.
The short video shows a car filled with koalas that have been rescued in a car. It was filmed on Kangaroo Island, known as Australia’s answer to the Galapagos Islands because of the rich biodiversity present there.
Around half of Kangaroo Island is thought to have been destroyed by the fires. It’s estimated that more than 20,000 koalas have died, over half of the island’s 50,000-strong population, but these lads made sure it didn’t spell the end for at least some of them.
The two boys in question are 19-year-old Micah and 18-year-old Caleb. While we’re not exactly sure how many koalas they managed to rescue, they reckon that it’s around 20.
Of that number, six of the poor marsupials were orphaned and two of them were mothers with children.
As well as rescuing them, they’re going to look after them until they can return to the wild, and refuse to take them off the island because it would further hurt an already decimated local population.
Obviously, they couldn’t rescue all of them and had to choose which of the stricken creatures most needed their help.
Their cousin, who shared the video originally, said they left behind any animals that seemed to be OK.
They worked on the criteria that any animals that didn’t have burns and were active, mature and responded quickly were still able to fend for themselves. That meant more vulnerable koalas were the first to be saved.
However, while they were rescuing them they saw first-hand the horrific damage that is being done. They reported that around 60 percent of the koalas they came across had burned to death, while one fifth of the koalas they saved died within the first day due to their injuries.
Still, among all of the horror, there are people out there trying to make a difference for the better.
The video was shared on Reddit with the caption: “Amid the terrible bushfires in Australia, my cousins went out and saved as many koalas as they could. Good on ’em.”
Good on ’em is right.
The Scale of Australia’s Black Summer
To understand why a car full of koalas moved so many people, it helps to remember how big the 2019 to 2020 fire season was. Australians call it the Black Summer. The fires burned more than 24 million hectares, an area of roughly 93,000 square miles, and destroyed thousands of homes. The season did not officially end until March 31, 2020.
The toll on wildlife was staggering. Early estimates from ecologists at the University of Sydney put the number of mammals, birds and reptiles lost at around 480 million, a figure later raised to more than a billion. A later study estimated that about three billion land animals, most of them reptiles, were killed or displaced. Koalas, slow moving and dependent on eucalyptus trees that burn fiercely, were among the most visible victims.
Why Kangaroo Island Was Hit So Hard
Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia, is often compared to the Galapagos because so much of its wildlife is found nowhere else, or survives there in unusually healthy numbers. That isolation, usually a protection, became a trap when fire swept across the island. Several fires together burned more than 2,100 square kilometers, about 52 percent of the island, and animals had nowhere to run. The early figure of 20,000 dead koalas quoted above turned out to be conservative: later estimates suggested that around 80 percent of the island’s roughly 50,000 koalas died.
The island’s koala population mattered beyond its own shores. Koalas are not native to Kangaroo Island. People introduced them there, and the island’s isolation kept them free of the chlamydia infection that affects many mainland populations, which made them an important insurance population for the species as a whole. Losing a large share of them was a blow to conservationists everywhere.
How Rescuers Decided Who to Save
The cousins in the video did something that trained wildlife carers do every day during a disaster: triage. With limited space and time, they left behind koalas that were active, alert and unburned, and focused on the orphans, mothers with young and injured animals least likely to survive alone. It is a hard choice, but it is the one that saves the most lives.
Many of the rescued animals from the fire zones were taken to temporary hospitals and wildlife parks, where volunteers treated burns, bandaged paws and hand fed joeys. Some koalas needed weeks of care before they could be released back into unburned bushland.
If You Ever Find Injured Wildlife
Stories like this one can inspire people to jump in, but handling a wild animal without training can hurt both you and the animal. General advice from wildlife groups is simple:
- Call a local wildlife rescue organization or veterinarian first and follow their instructions.
- Keep your distance. Frightened wild animals can scratch and bite, and koalas have strong claws.
- If you are told to contain the animal, use a towel and a ventilated box, and keep it somewhere dark, quiet and warm.
- Do not give food or water unless a wildlife carer tells you to.
If you want to help from far away, donating to established wildlife hospitals and conservation charities that work on the ground is usually the most effective option.
Good on ‘Em, Still
Years after the Black Summer, the image of two young men with a back seat full of koalas still sums up something people want to believe about disasters: that even in the worst moments, someone will stop the car and help. Micah and Caleb could not save every animal on the island. They saved the ones they could, and that was enough to make the world pay attention.