Koalas and mates run for lives in Oz bush blazes

The first victim of Sydney's wildfire crisis was brought to Jenny Peters's doorstep on Christmas Day.

A motorist had found the ringtail possum cowering by the side of the road, shaking badly. Its fur was scorched, its whiskers burned away.

Two days later came the tiny pygmy possum that Mrs. Peters rescued from a friend's property. Its tail was burned. So were its feet. That Saturday, emergency workers brought her another ringtail possum, a mother who had been suckling. The babies weren't with her and, Peters says, "she was very, very stressed out."

Ever since a large part of the countryside around Sydney - about 1.25 million acres, or half the size of Yellowstone National Park - erupted on Christmas Day, firefighters have been battling almost nonstop to save human lives and homes. But as the crisis begins to abate without the loss of a single human life, the focus is moving to the impact on koalas and other native wildlife.

In the homes of volunteers like Jenny Peters - and the offices of veterinarians and other experts - they're trying to figure out just what that impact has been. The simple answer is it's too early to tell. But thanks to what looks like relatively few animal victims ending up in shelters, disagreement is already sprouting over just how tragic these fires have - or have not - been.

According to Carol MacDougall, chief executive officer of the Wildlife Information & Rescue Service (WIRES), a network of volunteers (including Peters) who care for injured animals across Sydney's home state of New South Wales, the organization has so far cared for 200 animals injured by the fires.

That is a small number when you consider that last year WIRES notched up 56,000 rescues.

That makes Mrs. MacDougall think the toll on wildlife may have been dauntingly large. No animals to rescue, she says, could mean there were simply more killed in the intense fires that have bounced through the eucalyptus forests around Sydney at upwards of 30 miles an hour.

"It's absolutely devastating," MacDougall says. "We're very disappointed by the [low] number of animals that have come in. We would have hoped for more."

She isn't the only one worried. In 1994, when the last major fires raged around Sydney, there were more than 50 possums brought into a triage center set up at the Wonderland Wildlife Park.

"This year we had three or four," says Amanda Twomey, a veterinary nurse at the park. But "because we haven't got that many in, it doesn't mean that we haven't lost many."

This year's fires, Ms. Twomey says, were in more isolated areas, away from the helping hands of humans. They also moved faster and may have been harder for animals to escape.

At the Australian Koala Foundation, they are so concerned about the possible impact on what is already a threatened population of koalas in New South Wales that they have established a disaster fund.

In 1994, at least one community of koalas north of Sydney was almost wiped out by wildfires. From that area alone some 50 koalas ended up at rescue centers, according to Ann Sharp, spokeswoman for the foundation. This time, not one koala has been brought in to wildlife rescue groups anywhere around Sydney, Ms. Sharp says.

That, Sharp believes, may be a sign that turns out to be bad rather than good for the 10,000 koalas thought to be living in New South Wales.

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