- At least half of Australia’s only disease-free koala population is feared dead with more badly hurt after bushfires swept through an island sanctuary.
- Kangaroo Island is home to many wild populations of native animals including the much-loved koala.
- Massive bushfires have flared up in the country’s southeast in a months-long crisis, killing nearly half a billion native animals.
- Other than fires there are bacterial infection, which causes blindness, infertility and death in the species, is widespread in koalas in the eastern Queensland and New South Wales states.