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A koala on a burnt tree, Kangaroo Island © Julie Fletcher / WWF-Australia

A koala on a burnt tree, Kangaroo Island © Julie Fletcher / WWF-Australia

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Bushfire emergency

Australia is recovering from a nationwide bushfire emergency. Can you help us save wildlife, and restore what has been lost?
Australia is recovering from a nationwide bushfire emergency. Can you help us save wildlife, and restore what has been lost?

Our Aussie icons have lost their homes and their lives to catastrophic bushfires.

URGENT APPEAL: Across the country, over 12 million hectares of Australian land has been burned to the ground. Over 1.25 billion animals have lost their lives so far, including thousands of koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, birds and other iconic wildlife. Your support is urgently needed to care for injured wildlife and restore their homes. 

  

You can help care for surviving wildlife and restore their damaged habitats by supporting our bushfire recovery program. There's still a long road ahead - can we count on your support today? 

Australia’s Bushfire Emergency

Australia has been ravaged by the most devastating bushfire season the country has ever seen.

Over 12 million hectares of Australian land has been burned.

It’s estimated that as many as 8,400 koalas perished in fires on the mid-north coast of NSW and Kangaroo Island in South Australia has lost over 50% of their koala population. This is a devastating blow for an iconic species already in decline, and these bushfires have the potential to hasten koalas’ slide towards extinction in eastern Australia.

Koalas could be extinct in the wild in eastern Australia in as little as 30 years due mainly to ongoing excessive tree-clearing for agricultural and urban development and climate heating triggered bushfires that destroy koala habitat, that potentially accelerate the extinction timeline.

But all hope is not lost. Help is urgently needed to support our bushfire recovery work, to deliver:

 

• Wildlife care - including partnering with wildlife response organisations, communities and scientists nationally to swiftly implement effective large-scale disaster response and recovery programs nationwide. To fund this program of work WWF has already delivered an initial AUD$2 million for immediate wildlife rescue, care and recovery.
• Habitat restoration - including restoring native forests and damaged wildlife habitat, stopping deforestation, cultivating greater wildlife habitat corridor connections, rehabilitating critical endangered habitat areas and supporting best practice Indigenous and rural fire management.
• Future fire-proofing Australia - including working to develop and promote innovative new approaches and proven solutions to help mitigate global heating, climate change, better climate event preparedness, species adaptation and long-term wildlife and nature conservation efforts that help secure Australia's precious natural resources for people and nature. 

 

Can you help our precious wildlife recover from this disaster? 

 

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Please check your email for confirmation. If you don’t receive an email, please note that due to the high volume of donations we’ve received, it may take longer than normal for us to process your payment receipt.

If you have made an animal adoption, please note that delivery of adoption packs will unfortunately be delayed due to the high volume of donations currently being processed.

For urgent questions, please call our supporter relations team on 1800 032 551.

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Your gift towards our Australian Wildlife and Nature Recovery Fund will make a huge difference as we begin to recover from the bushfire crisis.

Send a message to the Australian government

The road to recovery starts with getting urgently needed funds to frontline wildlife carers in the fire grounds. The next step is ensuring we restore the homes our wildlife lost, by replanting the trees we need to rebuild our natural lands again.



We are working hard to ensure we get the recovery program right; a critical step in making sure we don’t suffer this much loss of life and landscape again.



All recovery efforts should be targeted to ensuring that we replant the habitats we’ve lost to tree clearing and fires; protecting our remaining native trees and forests still standing, and advocating for better decision making and bushland management policies in the years to come.



We’re working with all the governments undertaking the recovery effort, to make sure they do so in a way that helps protect our people and wildlife from similar crises in future.



Are you with us? Add your voice to our call for action! Help us secure a better funded, more comprehensive bushfire recovery plan to protect people and nature - one that protects and restores nature.

We will gather this rapidly growing list of people and deliver this petition to government on your behalf in early 2020.

Here's the message we're sending:

 

Dear Leaders,

This summer’s bushfire crisis has been heartbreaking.Over the Christmas break, WWF-Australia’s supporters joined together to show their support for a nature-based recovery plan that restores native habitat to feed and shelter our wildlife and demands better policies and laws to protect their bushland homes in future.

Our supporters have done this by putting their hand in their pocket to contribute to the newly launched Australian Wildlife and Nature Recovery Fund.
We have made this investment to protect the future of our country, and now we’re calling on you to do the same - to ensure that you get the recovery mix right..

We are calling for a comprehensive nature-based recovery plan that will seek to:

  • Assess the impact on threatened species affected by the fires
  • Establish a nature-based fire recovery body to coordinate recovery efforts
  • Develop a large scale, landscape level reforestation plan
  • Stabilize and reverse the decline of threatened species populations whose homes have been lost
  • Establish an Aboriginal fire management program
  • Fund a Climate Preparedness & Adaptation Innovation Hub
  • Cease all native forest logging for 24 months within fire affected landscapes
  • Invest in the development of a timber transition plan
  • Protect mature native forests by phasing out major deforestation
  • Establish a landscape restoration fund with a carbon capture focus
Onlyby ensuring we adopt a nature-based recovery can we begin to turn around this disastrous situation- and begin to forge a new deal for people and nature.

On behalf of WWF-Australia’s supporters, I thank you for your time.

 

 

If you have any questions about your donation, please do not hesitate to contact our friendly Supporter Services team either by email: enquiries@wwf.org.au or call 1800 032 551

WWF is one of Australia’s most trusted conservation organisations. At WWF, we work in Australia and in our Asia-Pacific backyard to protect endangered species and habitats, meet the challenge of climate change, and build a world where people live in harmony with nature. This would not be possible without financial support from our community. Thank you! If you would like to help us, please make a donation.

All donations of $2 or more to WWF-Australia are tax-deductible. For your convenience we will send you one receipt at the end of the financial year, for the total amount of your tax deductible donations.
Registered Charity Number: ACN 001 594 074 | NSW License Number: CFN 13143

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