Wildfire wildlife

As our own firefighters go off to help their Australian comrades in Victoria, we're encouraged to donate money to help victims of the fire.

It appears that we've heeded the message, contributing $936,000 in the last week to the Red Cross Victorian Bushfires Appeal. No doubt that this, combined with $500,000 from the New Zealand Government, will be a significant contribution to the families who have lost loved ones and homes.

Among all the human stories from this disaster that have touched hearts around the world, a little girl nicknamed Sam has drawn attention to those possibly worst hit by the fire - the wildlife for whom the 330,000 hectares of torched land, used to be home.

Sam was discovered and filmed by Australian firefighter Dave Tree, who then helped the distraught marsupial to a drink of water. The koala was later sent to Mountain Ash Wildlife Shelter to recover from scorched paws. As of yesterday, the YouTube footage had attracted over 820,000 views.

Sam may well be the face of the silent many who shared the horror but remain unaccounted for, without a home and probably in pain. If so, hopefully her ordeal will encourage equally generous support to funds like Wildlife Victoria's Bushfire Appeal as we've seen to the more human-centred giving.

I'm glad that a friend forwarded this wildlife appeal site to me, otherwise I may not have known of its existence. The Statewide Wildlife Rescue Emergency Service is also accepting donations for similar work.

With a lot of focus on helping the human victims, I was reminded of a quote I heard towards the end of last year suggesting that 99% of charity goes to anthropocentric causes, with negligible relative contributions to animal and environmental causes. The only reference I can find to such a comment is this rather lively rebuttal posted by Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd, who's not known for being subtle. (If anyone can find this statistic somewhere, I'd be interested in finding out more.)

The debate about inequality of giving to the planet is probably best reserved for another time and I have no intention of belittling the importance for us to support our own. For now though, let's not forget that the forests and all its creatures could do with our help too.

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Green Frog   #1   02:05 pm Apr 13 2009

I for one was humbled and moved to tears by the kindness of a human to an animal, and saw it as something hopeful, in an otherwise horrific week for Australia.

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