Qween Posted January 30, 2020 Posted January 30, 2020 Conservationists and wildlife experts are anxious that raging bushfires sweeping through Australia have resulted in “catastrophic losses”, amid fears an entire species may have been wiped out. Po[CENSORED]tions of small marsupials called dunnarts and glossy black cockatoos may have been destroyed in the fires that burned a third of Kangaroo Island, experts say. The island, located off the country’s southern coast, is known as Australia’s answer to the Galapagos Islands – but what remains has been described as a “scorched wasteland”. Ecologists are hoping to find survivors of the dunnart po[CENSORED]tion and rescue them “before they are completely gone”. Heidi Groffen, an ecologist and coordinator for the nonprofit Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife, said the mouse-like marsupials are too small to outrun wildfires and the po[CENSORED]tion of around 300 may have been wiped out. But she remained hopeful some may have found refuge in the crevices of rocks. “Even if there are survivors, there is no food for them now,” she said. “We’re hoping to bring some into captivity before they are completely gone.” “The Kangaroo Island dunnart is our main species of concern and it looks like its entire known [habitat] range has been fried. We are locating unburnt remnant patches of its habitat to see if we can locate it through camera trapping.” Mr Hodgens said a team has already set cameras to try and detect any survivors, and hope to locate all potential areas the species may persist in through drone mapping. The 50,000-strong koala po[CENSORED]tion on the island has also suffered devastating losses, with as much as half the po[CENSORED]tion believed to have been killed by the fires. And it is unclear how many from a unique flock of the rare glossy black cockatoos escaped the blazes and whether they have a future on an island where much of their habitat has turned to ash.
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