The Conversation
Rescuers Drop Vegetables From The Sky To Save Australian Wildlife
While periods of heavy rains and cooler temperatures are bringing some much-needed relief to fire-ravaged Australia, more than 100 blazes are still burning in Victoria and New South Wales States – and the country's fire season is far from over.
Along with the millions of people who have had to evacuate and leave their homes to escape the flames, over a billion animals are estimated to have died in the fire, and countless others have had to flee. It's enough to break any animal lover's heart.
Luckily, there's some hope – and lots of help – on the way for the country's most vulnerable critters.
In what's being called “Operation Rock Wallaby," a team of rescue workers in New South Wales are taking to the sky and dropping thousands of carrots and sweet potatoes from helicopters to help feed the animals, which are on the country's list of endangered species.
(Source: Anil Chacko Facebook )
The Brush-Tailed Rock Wallabies, which look like small kangaroos with bushy tails, were pushed out of their natural habitat by the fires and are now in danger of starving to death.
“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," the state's environment minister Matt Kean told ABC News .
Operation Rock Wallaby is being funded by the government of New South Wales, and their plan of dropping more than 2,000 pounds of produce in areas affected by the fires is well underway.
Kean says the food drops will continue statewide as a short-term solution to help endangered animals. Other advocates, including Jess Abrahams, a nature campaigner the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) said a long-term plan to tackle climate change is what the country needs most.
"I can't underline how urgent it is, and we need to take real action on climate change nationally and globally if we want to protect our beautiful wildlife," he told The Sydney Morning Herald .
While Australia has a long way to go to recover from the fires, we're glad to see people working together and coming up with ways to protect the animals that have survived.
If you want to help Australia's wildlife, there are a number of organizations you can consider donating to:
