Dog called Bear leads fight to save koalas from Australian bushfires
Sydney, AustraliaReuters Australian scientists are using sniffer dogs to rescue koalas struggling to survive damaging bushfires as they try to avoid a repeat of last year’s high death count of the native animals. Led by Bear, a border collie and Australian cattle dog cross, Detection Dogs for Conservation saved more than 100 koalas in the […]
About three billion animals harmed in Australian bushfires, WWF says
Sydney, AustraliaReuters Nearly three billion koalas, kangaroos and other native Australian animals were killed or displaced by bushfires in 2019 and 2020, a study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said, triple the group’s earlier estimates. Some 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds and 51 million frogs were impacted by […]
Climate change lengthens Australian summers by 50 per cent – says study
Sydney, AustraliaReuters Australian summers are now effectively twice as long as its winters as climate change has increased temperatures since the middle of the last century, research released in the wake of the nation’s unprecedented fire season showed on Monday. The report by the Australia Institute, a Canberra-based think tank, compared data from the past […]
Australia’s most populous state says fires contained for the first time in nearly six months
Sydney, AustraliaReuters Fires across Australia’s most populous state are now contained for the first time in nearly six months, authorities said on Friday, as heavy rains aid firefighters and boost some dam levels to their highest in nearly two years. Australia has been battling hundreds of blazes since September in an unusually prolonged summer wildfire […]
AUSTRALIA: IN FIRE-HIT RURAL AREAS, CLIMATE DEBATE BURNS DEEP
KATE LAMB, of Reuters, reports from the bushfire devastated eastern Victoria…
Australia welcomes drought-easing drenching, even as it brings floods
Sydney, AustraliaReuters The east coast of Australia welcomed the heaviest drenching in years on Friday, dousing some of the country’s most damaging and long-running wildfires and easing a drought that has crippled farming across two states. Sydney alone had seen more than 60 millimetres of rain in the past 24 hours and was forecast to […]
STRANGESIGHTS: “GOLDEN TAGGED” FISH; A DELUGE OF MAIL; AND, ‘HUT HUNTER’ WANTED…
DAVID ADAMS looks at the odder side of life…
DISASTER RESPONSE: BURNED BY WILDFIRE LOSSES, INSURANCE INDUSTRY RETHINKS RISKS
LAURIE GOERING, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on how insurance companies are looking to the future in the face of rising economic costs from disasters…
ESSAY: IS IT RIGHT FOR CHRISTIANS TO CRITICISE LEADERS?
Sight contributor NILS VON KALM looks at, in the context of recent bushfires in Australia and criticism of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s response, whether it’s right for Christians to be critical of leaders’ actions…
Rescuer opens home to baby flying foxes orphaned by Australian bushfires
Bomaderry, AustraliaReuters Janine Davies lifts out a three-week-old baby flying fox from its makeshift home of a towel draped over a rack in her bathroom and gently feeds it milk using a tiny bottle. Like any mother of a newborn, Davies is running on little sleep as she cares for around 50 grey-headed flying foxes […]