Fires brought calamity to Australia's wildlife

SYDNEY, Australia - Kangaroo corpses lay scattered by the roadsides while wombats that survived the wildfires' onslaught emerged from their underground burrows to find blackened earth and nothing to eat.

Wildlife rescue officials worked frantically yesterday to help the animals that made it through Australia's worst-ever wildfires, but they said millions of animals likely perished in the inferno.

Scores of kangaroos have been found dead around roads, where they were overwhelmed by flames and smoke while attempting to flee, said Jon Rowdon, president of the rescue group Wildlife Victoria.

Kangaroos that survived are suffering from burned feet, a result of their territorial behavior. After escaping the initial flames, the creatures - which prefer to stay in one area - likely circled back to their homes, singeing their feet on the smoldering ground.

"It's just horrific," said Neil Morgan, president of the Statewide Wildlife Rescue Emergency Service in Victoria, the state where fires were still burning.

Some wombats that hid in their burrows managed to survive the blazes, but those that are not rescued by humans face a slow and certain death as they emerge to find their food supply gone, said Pat O'Brien, president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia.

Police said yesterday that they were questioning two people about the fires. They declined to say whether the two had been arrested or even detained, and released a statement that described them as "assisting police with their inquiries."

Detectives responding to a tip found the men near Yea, which is about 12 miles north of Marysville, a town utterly wrecked by an inferno Saturday and where officials say up to 100 people were killed.

The official human death toll stood at 181 from the weekend's deadly fires, and authorities said it would exceed 200. While the scope of the wildlife devastation was still unclear, it was likely to be in the "millions," Rowdon said.

Hundreds of burned, stressed and dehydrated animals - including kangaroos, koalas, lizards and birds - have been taken to shelters across the region.

Rescuers have doled out antibiotics, pain relievers and fluids to the critters in a bid to keep them comfortable, but some of the severely injured were euthanized.

"We've got a wallaby joey at the moment that has crispy fried ears because he stuck his head out of his mum's pouch and lost all his whiskers and cooked up his nose," Rowdon said. "They're the ones your hearts really go out to."

In some of the hardest-hit areas, rescuers used vaporizing tents to help creatures whose lungs were burned by the searing heat and smoke.

One furry survivor has emerged a star: A koala, nicknamed "Sam" by her rescuers, was found moving gingerly on scorched paws Sunday. Firefighter David Tree offered the animal a bottle of water, which she eagerly accepted, holding Tree's hand as he poured water into her mouth - a moment captured in a photograph seen around the world.

"You all right, buddy?" Tree asks in a video of the encounter as he approaches the koala.

Sam is being treated at the Mountain Ash Wildlife Shelter in Rawson, 100 miles east of Melbourne, where she has attracted the attention of a male koala, nicknamed "Bob," manager Coleen Wood said.

The two have been inseparable, with Bob keeping a protective watch over his new friend, she said.