An Australian media agency in New York is raising awareness by attaching stuffed koalas to lamp-posts and poles.
Last week, the staff at Cummins&Partners, which is based in Melbourne that has a New York office, placed the stuffed toys around the Big Apple.
A sign of information on how to donate to a wildlife rescue group WIRES is attached to each koala. An Instagram account of Koalas of NYC was formed as part of the project.
The pictures show koalas on poles, bridges, lamp-posts, signposts, trees and fire trucks around the city. The Australian bushfire was believed to have started from a sparking electrical transformer. About 130 fires continue to burn across New South Wales state, with 31 more in neighboring Victoria.
‘There is obviously a need for a national review of the response,’ PM Morrison said in an interview with ABC television.
Asked whether it should be a Royal Commission, a powerful judicial inquiry, Morrison said, ‘I think that is what would be necessary and I will be taking a proposal through the cabinet to that end, but it must be done with consultations with the states and territories.’
The dangerous spring blazes have burnt through almost two million hectares in New South Wales and Queensland alone. Many animals are strong but others, unfortunately, don’t survive.
“Koalas don’t make noise much of the time,” says Prof Chris Dickman, an ecology expert at Sydney University.
“Males only make booming noises during mating season. Other than that they’re quiet animals. So hearing their yelps is a pretty bad sign things are going catastrophically wrong for these animals.”
“These screams aren’t part of the vocal repertoire of the forest,” Prof Dickman adds. “They only happen during times of great stress or pain – such as when a possum is savaged by a dog.”
A wildlife ecologist Prof Euan Ritchie from Deakin University said: “The fire can kill their food or shelter, or both. These animals might survive the immediate effects of a fire if they can escape in time, but if it burns their habitat, they’re more exposed to the introduced predators,” he says.
[rumble video_id=v4vh9p domain_id=u7nb2]