The Australian Wildfires

The Australian Wildfires

Lily Harrison, Business Manager

More than one billion native animals have died, 3,000 homes have been destroyed, 27 lives have been lost, and 17.9 million acres of land have been burned. Australia is currently up in flames.

In September of 2019, the fire started and since then it has kept growing. Many fires were kept under control but two larger fires merged causing the fire to spread. The fire is known as Australia’s war.

Australia is the driest habited continent on earth. Fires are something Australians are used to at this point but that doesn’t mean damage isn’t being made.

The fires are also apart of Australia’s past. Indigenous Aboriginals knew this only too well and part of their tribal life was to burn areas of the bush, it’s a necessary part of environmental life.

Tim Redd said “We as modern Australians need to come and learn about our bush, we need to make sure that we are doing correct and safe preventative burning and making sure that the tinder available to burn in our summer months is drastically reduced.

Our current conservative government has cut drastically the funding that goes to the environmental care of our bushland and national parks which has also left no-one there to prevent such things occurring. We as Australians, need to firstly understand our environment and how to live symbiotically with it, while in conjunction we have prevention practices in place and a government who is more concerned with our environment rather than the money it can make from exploiting it” when asked if there is anything that could be done to prevent fires.

People are desperately battling walls of fire. Over a quarter million people have been asked to evacuate, but instead many prepared to protect their homes.

People are starting to search through their burned down homes, towns are covered in smog filled towns, stores are empty, people’s lives have been flipped upside down.

The smoke in the country have made a huge impact as well. The smoke was causing people to have buying dusk masks to help them breathe. The smoke was to the point to where it was like smoking 37 cigarettes at once. The wind helped a little but didn’t help make a major difference.

Tim Reed had to evacuate his home and drive 3 hours along the great ocean just to get to relatively clean breathing air.

People are not the only ones suffering in Australia wildlife is being affected greatly. People are taking in wildlife and caring for them while their homes are burning up.

Julie Taylor Mills has turned her property into a miniature animal sanctuary: She built fences, planted grass, and bought special supplies for the animals so that they could survive.

The best thing that humans can do is to learn and live symbiotically with our environment. Thinking about the personal impacts one has by how they live When we understand and live with the natural cycles of where we live, we do so much more to reduce our impact on the environment. At the end of the day, we are humans & it’s our role to protect, care and support mother nature and her environment… the closer we can come to be doing this, the better the world will be for us all to live harmoniously and symbiotically.