Food airdropped for bushfire-affected animals in Australia

Sydney, Jan 13
Australian authorities were dropping tonnes of food from helicopters for animals who were starving as a result of the destruction of their habitat due to the raging bushfires that have swept the country since September 2019.

The New South Wales (NSW) government has deployed helicopters the past week to drop more than two tonnes of carrots and sweet potatoes at different sites where Brush-tailed Rock- wallabies, a marsupial native to southeastern Australia, lives, Efe news reported on Monday.

The drops have taken place in at least six different locations where the animals live.

"The provision of supplementary food is one of the key strategies we are deploying to promote the survival and recovery of endangered species like the Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby," NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean said in a statement.

Kean said the operation was the most widespread food distribution initiative dedicated to reaching Brush-tailed Rock-wallabies and that it would contribute toward maintaining their population, as well as to help their recovery. The government is also installing cameras to observe the animals' food consumption.

"Initial fire assessments indicate the habitat of several important Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby populations was burnt in the recent bushfires. The wallabies typically survive the fire itself, but are then left stranded with limited natural food as the fire takes out the vegetation around their rocky habitat," Kean said.

Kean's statement said that the food drop campaign will be followed by an intensive "feral predator control" to ensure the animals recover appropriately.

Since September 2019, fires have ravaged more than 80,000 square km - an area larger than Ireland - and left 28 people dead, besides an estimated one billion wild animals.

The fires have released some 349 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past four months, according to the non-profit Journalists for the Planet, compared to the 532 million tonnes of the country's total annual emissions in all of 2018.