The gallery above shows the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie, Australia. Volunteers from the Koala Hospital have been working alongside National Parks and Wildlife Service crews searching for koalas, following weeks of devastating bushfires across New South Wales and Queensland. Koalas rescued from fire grounds have been brought back to the hospital for treatment. 

An estimated million hectares of land has been burned by bushfire, killing an estimated 1,000 koalas along with other wildlife. As many as 350 koalas died in a single nature reserve near Port Macquarie alone, raising fears for the future of the creature in the area. 

Sue Ashton, the Port Macquarie Koala hospital's president, said wildlife volunteers would join firefighters in the area to assess the scale of loss and begin a rescue operation for the surviving koalas. 

"What happens to a koala in a fire is that they climb up to the top of the tree and they curl up into a little ball. If the fire goes through quickly and just singes their fur, they are fine the fur will grow back," she said. 

But if the fire intensifies and continues to burn up the tree "they'll perish," she added.

As the days go by, a lack of water is further hampering their chances of survival. 

"That is our concern, not only that they are burnt, but that they are now dehydrated," Ashton said. 

"They are going days without water, or leaf – which gives them 65 percent of their water," she added.

A firefighter Terry Hill told AFP last week: "The fire has just gone straight through (the koala habitat) and very little would actually survive in there unscathed."

"Wallabies, kangaroo, deer – would get out because they can run. But koalas just really can't," he added. 

Rescuers are hoping to gain greater access to the devastated koala habitat tomorrow, where authorities say the fire is being brought under control.

Wildlife rescuers hold grave fears for this "very rare" population of hundreds of koalas living in the fire zone. 

"The special importance of those koalas is that they are very genetically diverse," Ashton told AFP. Her fears are that "hundreds" in the known koala breeding area "have perished in the fire". 

"It's a national tragedy because this koala population is so unique," she added. 

Land clearing and development over time has meant a loss of habitat for the tree-dwelling koalas, leading to less connectivity between populations, increased inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity of the marsupial.

Nick Boyle, of Taronga Conservation Society, said "our hearts are breaking" not only for the victims but also for the "defenceless wildlife" that had been killed by the state's "earliest and worst" bushfire season. 

"Pressures on the koala were already compounding," he said, citing habitat loss and non-native predators. "And now this."

The fire is believed to have been sparked by a lightning strike on October 26, 2019, at some 400 kilometers north of Sydney. Though Australia is a bushfire-prone country, scientists say this year's fire season is being exacerbated by climate change. 

The Bureau of Meteorology says human-caused climate change is increasing the "frequency and severity" of dangerous bushfire conditions by raising temperatures, sapping moisture from the environment and causing an earlier and more extreme fire season. 

Not only animals are threatened. The death toll from devastating bushfires in eastern Australia has risen to four. Hundreds of houses have already been damaged or destroyed and more than one million hectares (2.5 million acres) of land burnt in the blazes.

(All pictures via VCG. Edited by An Qi)

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