Waves are planned for wildlife researcher kelly it is becoming clear just how perilous the situation is. She decides to evacuate the 12 koala bears that she has been studying for years before the flames reach the Blue Mountains it is the 1st time that she has been forced to take this kind of action. You know the old old story. With a small group of banks pounce on volunteers she manages to save a small but still significant number of koalas their survival is in. Once and for the conservation of the species. Hundreds of thousands of other animals are also in immediate danger. Area. Where theyre at yeah yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah so. One month after the evacuation of the koala bass we meet up with kelly again on the edge of the National Park where she once. Shes still unable to visit the most heavily bound area for safety reasons. Yeah ok then blazes was still raging in 2 australian states and had already destroyed 80 percent of the Blue MountainsNational Park the park is part of a unesco World Heritage area and home to the countrys most genetically diverse population of koalas. Pretty heartbreaking to say especially once you get to know koalas you know we give them names who go volunteers that come out to help track them where we had to we were really lucky that we got in and got some out before the fires that had radio collars on them and say all but 2 weve got one koala on the on burnt side we hope is still here and then one that we had to lay down in the area he was too far and it would be an all day just to get one koala and we got 4 or 5 that day so we really came to get it and see how hes doing but knowing theres so many through here and now its such an important population thats nationally significant yet without any help or a king to watch it happen. The researchers real mission is to devise strategies to help protect the species from possible extinction but instead she finds herself giving 1st aid to animals that have escaped the flames. Yeah. Down a bit i think whats happening is that working can stations with water and food are now essential for the d. Hydrated injured marsupial survival thats been isnt it. We can also put a rope on the bottom to guide it as it goes out. But im just going to check. Any. More territory. That the colors come off. So dont really want to hear that. We had a story of hope here in the mountains where finding a lot of koalas where we didnt expect there were young and growing populations and theyre in in in a protected area thats protected from habitat loss and now weve lost 4 for the 5 populations that have been impacted by. Kelly came to us i think it was around the 23rd of december. It was the day the township of the open which is about a 15 minute draw from he was impacted by severe far conditions they lost houses the conditions were terrible. She was found by the forefathers at about midnight in the area of course that had been completely burnt out the amazing thing about her is that coming out of that area she has not been. Morgan film ponces been working closely with kelly lead for years he has even named one of the bands in his camp kelly in how ana carried a koala has recovered from the problems caused by smoke inhalation bans both kelly and her companion marine are suffering from a bacterial infection that focal wanders can end in death its a real privilege to have these animals come in and stay with us its a lot of stress as a carer because you want to help everyone but you can unfortunately we cant always help these animals to the point that they can be released sometimes we have to wind it all there to seek obviously the best part of doing this is that you get to let them go and take them back when i should be because this isnt where they should be back out in the wall is where those guys should be to go out and make more more qualities. You know hes eons of looking after wild animals morgan has never had so much to do one of the main challenges is finding the right eucalyptus leaves for them to eat. He says he is distraught and disappointed by the way australian politicians have failed to acknowledge the dangers of Climate Change for so many years far is not new its trial by any stretch but certainly the skyll and the intensity of the far as it was saying now is something that i think any of us have signed the tractors will say the strike is always advise and that im arguably thats correct but not like this by the warming just not used to getting the scale of animals that weve got coming in right now as a result of these farmers and its a National Treasure or International Tragedy and these animals dont just belong to us as trying to belong to the world. And just the the sky and the loss is imaginary will. Have theyre going to bounce back and its not obviously its not just the koalas its always try and wildlife affected here and the bush as well. The bush fires raged for 240 days destroying more than 12000000 hectares of bush and releasing 400000000 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the. Wildfires are a seasonal occurrence in Australia Global warming has extended those seasons and made the blazers more severe. For years australia has been experiencing extremely homes and dry summers. 1000000000 animals are estimated to have died in last summers mines according to experts its a figure that has shocked the world. It was one of the most destructive environmental catastrophes of our times. An army of volunteers vets and scientists joined together to help in an incredible act of solidarity. The. Australia was caught unprepared and was confronted with its own vulnerability it became apparent that it did not have enough resources and effective strategies to protect its unique ecosystems the government has listed 1131000 species that needed emergency intervention to ensure that survival after the devastating fires. Could come get a little. Bit ive. Never called him a know the quick of us your animals came to us than expected i thought that many died in the flames or had to be put to sleep because they couldnt be saved but are you. Going to get him a living going to look at that we treat our data most with birds happen if you put it up if we consider whether treatment is worthwhile or not and unfortunately had to. They were not to be safe. We decided to put to sleep animals with more than 20 percent burns mistreatment in those cases has little chance of success or is very protracted. Killed any malice the animals have in behavior to protect themselves in fires they follow natures lessons in the event of danger or that the one bats generally hide under ground and koalas climb up trees higher and higher when you become a normal fire is usually burn in the middle section and travel rapidly developing out the eucalyptus trees are full of oil and that the fire moves on and the treetops remain intact and when the creatures are badly affected by smoke inhalation they can survive with this year the fires were so ferocious that the trees burned in their entirety one of the people in the koalas were roasted alive in the treetops on that got off the. Italian vet Lorenzo Cranston is director of the university of sydneys avian reptile and exotic pet hospital which provides canta wildlife. Hes one of the few people able to treat the little researched koalas today he is looking after a fonzie a koala who was found catching on to a tree in a river although he has no obvious severe injuries the creature still isnt back on its feet. Were going to take some of a cerebral spinal fluid and send it to a lab for testing. We want to know whether it contains inflammatory cells or bacteria which would cause an satellite s. Or meningitis b. You know which because in that case we will of course have to treat the animal differently with a bit of a bit of. At least the bushfires have given scientists an opportunity to gather useful data and the global headlines have forced the all foreigners to provide funds to help save wildlife yet silicosis if everything goes well we will hopefully develop new strategies now that we can use to help australian wildlife in the future fires on its own with the genius of not just to save animals directly but also for example by issuing guidelines to prevent those kinds of fires every year and to know how to respond when the fires become threatening thats just as important as the treatment of the animals themselves that prevention is better than a cure but any of them in your head that. Have been living in sydneys taronga zoo since their evacuation bath they are patiently awaiting their return to the wild. Theyre feeling a lot better and while a climatized and no longer dehydrated. Thank you. That weve just gone through and removed a few of their branches that fed out yesterday what it does they are the lucky ones and they are now in good hands nick has been looking after. Spent 20 years now but even so particular responsibility in this situation 1st few days no doubt you know there was some settling in stress that koalas endured they were captured from very tall trees in the wall and put into little carry crates and then transported a few hours by car so all of that was foreign to them so of course they were exhibiting some stress what weve seen in those few weeks that have unfolded since is that theyre quite comfortable animals now would change their Husbandry Practices to be is mainly just and so we only come here sit on of the day so the animals become accustomed to that were seeing demonstrate normal behavior is any good genetic population that we can hold on to is just being made so much more vital. At least 8000 koalas dying in the state of New South Wales are to do so as to mated that the countrys entire population of the creatures has been decimated. Their numbers were already in decline before the bushfires because of endemic disease the destruction of their habitats by uncontrolled logging and illegal wildlife trafficking. As a species was in their millions european settlement so were talking only just over 200 years and now were a seeing such a Huge Population of quine that were now within estimates of 8300000 now obviously significantly less than that due to the recent fires so when you consider such a small amount to what otherwise the habitat could occupy they are they are in dire straits like there are species in the climate and certainly you know worthy is being listed as a threatened species its taken a very catastrophic event like these large fires for people to actually realise the situation that i was watching. Its a little bit assuaged. After months of finance the deluge of rainfall not followed only partial relief. The worst france in 3 decades brought new problems to the beleaguered country. Where the events of this kind could become the new normal. In quick succession australia found its own going from one extreme to another for signs of an ecosystem that has been thrown off balance. Which could recover but only slowly. In the midst of the janssen destruction the sun signs of life and knew how. To run what they were doing a couple Different Things basically this is to inform us of putting our koalas back the ones we took out that to try that so were trying to work out if we need to put them back in the un burnside or if we can put them back in this low intensity band section where we got them from so they can be might be bouncing back so i will be going behind doing scat surveys and looking at how many sketches we find in the different quality vegetation and you guys have a during a search and rescue line looking out for koalas and if we find fresh scat well call you in to help go spotting for the actual koala that has the. The people and so i would just have to stay in a tight group today you now said rescue lines i was at radio safety g. P. S. Devices well so it is that they know that it has been 3 months since the coal miners were evacuated from the Blue Mountains and now it is possible for kelly to send forth again but in certain areas of the national long. Yeah thats what i suppose thank you its not that we fell out of his coat smudge is one of the dogs on the frontline of the koala search and rescue mission he can detect by smell things that we cannot see and that makes him indispensable worth so much if not. More. So hes finding some really small fragments like me. That you know they have one say that there are a fairly very much of your old dried there so thats half a dried koalas that you can also run a one so probably pray fire right up to the trench like. Oh my god. Its yeah that one good dope it. Gets him for a smudge. Kid and that old soon to be the green in there. So. Id be waco too. We have. Heard since the right yeah more recent and so here weve got surviving koalas so it hes finding older deposits at this site where we know those quotes have been through more recent days or probably in a week or 2 so it indicates the surviving animals which is great ok moving. The discovery of the fresh droppings motivates the volunteers to comb the bush for commons. Big starvation is also intended to a sas whether various enough foliage to nourish the animals in the wild all these information helps the research is to map the scorched zone and compare the data with that gathered before the bush fires it helps them gain a clearer picture of the blazers impact. Its hard to determine how many animals remain in the area but unless 100 tanks and is taken the beloved koala could disappear by the year 2050. Their 3rd. World. War. Or found forever. Well spotted. This hidden by the canopy out there. In the world. Yeah hes got a little dot mark on the chest there. So you can say he is a male and generally looks alright now is in Good Condition no signs of any injuries. So we will leave him in peace. Healthy look and go out to heaven let me straight up. So this is what we call in and call it go on tags so its a new color one we havent seen before because if we took them mostly out before the 5 and got 2 animals in here that do have tags on at the moment so most of the ones were going to find will be new we normally when we write a track we do find new animals every now and then because we know theres a pretty good population in here but we would also expect some might have moved out from the fire front up into this area as well so you whether this is a resident or a koala thats moved in we are not sure. For kelly this is just the beginning of a painstaking repopulation process one requiring a lot of time and a lot of energy got to get probably one more wake of imagery satellite imagery to look at chlorophyll content and just check we have ive got exact locations of where we took them from so we can see if that where we took them from is a good golly that thats good most of consonants and good kind of a name for them and in that case of put them straight back so they got them from for some of them we might choose to put them if they came from really that hit patch where much is to put them back on the other side the right nearby so its just coming down to those details now exactly when to put them back 2 months after our 1st visit we meet morgan again it has stopped raining the bushfires have been extinguished and walk is proceeding so the stuff is already as you feel it you know has a 3rd koala in his calf so when he took a man 7 weeks ago he was a deaths door but the animal has recovered quickly and is now ready to be released into the wild again online kelly and marie who we met back in january. Think its starting to wane and then something happened when the girls had some recent issues with skin problems through what we think is infestation of ticks that the had after all the right events that happened on our way there at the correlated with this explosion of ticks. Neither of them are sick or canadia and the both very well the guiding also white little moraine here has gained a kilo in the last 3 or 4 weeks and the other ones going about half of your life that it is putting on a little while and otherwise thered be 3 we already today released. Morgan has to kaffir them daily and disinfect bank cage every 3 days to find the teak infestation but hes not 99 cant intown returning the quantities to the habitat is a process that new. Needs patients and sound preparation. Part of the protocol is the quality get any tag and each year when recalled the color of the tag and the number and they also get a mark right you inserted sort of in the shoulder blood and that they in and isles off that if this animal gets sick again or gets injured and comes into chaos then we know who she is and who the medical history has been. So i will be looking at a lace another 4 weeks in cade to treat this skin condition now and thats providing it responds to the treatment that were getting. Well its ok im going to catch him today its all right. Now. Its faded. But with animals like this unexpected things can happen and that sort of blows out in matter tom of these animals dying careful and you cannot be tied and fatigued but youve got to you know he just wants to commit to it youve got to keep going until the jobs furnished. The our use of the wound. Has become a symbol of both global feelings and. That it is colleagues and squalor and that youve been a surgeon has been a strong disease for a few months now. I like taking a back the right way we caught it from the. Commies return home without incident and she remains completely oblivious to how significance to research is struggling to save her species. The emergence of covert 19 rushes the article almost to be released sooner than expected. This shows how connected our story is to that of our environment. And environment for which we are responsible. So i think again that the way this that now the sector of the commons and we certainly havent we obviously need biodiversity 70 percent of our medicines come from nature in a way highly dependent on it whether we realize it or not say im hoping that the tide changes and we do a mall before it really impacts us more than it has some and this is a big impact for astray and most people are affected by the pfizer knew someone who was affected by the 5 say nows a good time to change that and i think a lot of us will be pushing for that. People in looking for coverage. And there are many answers. There are many residents. And there are many alternatives to. Make up your own mind to. Make for mines. Faces date over the news that live from both ends and when its decision time for germany as coronavirus numbers climb to change or risking high chancellor Angela Merkel will address lawmakers this hour at a critical moment for the nation state medical workers on hearing tell me much more hospital concave numbers from mine this high but can judge the latest