admin Australia’s southern coast’s Kangaroo Island was a paradise full with dense forests and nature reserves, but it hasn’t been invulnerable to the bushfire epidemic that has swept across the mainland. NASA has recently released satellite image which shows the horrifying extent of the damage.
Kangaroo Island which is made up of protected nature reserves and is a home to native wildlife which includes koalas, sea lions, and diverse and rare bird species, including glossy black-cockatoos. It lies off the southwest of Adelaide, mainland of South Australia. Glossy black-cockatoos which have been brought back from the edge of disappearance over the last two decades.
In Flinders Chase National Park, the western part of Kangaroo Island, famous coastal rock formations and penguin colonies are found. And, after Tasmania and Melville Island, Kangaroo Island is Australia’s third largest island and is being a very popular tourist destination for both Australians and nature lovers, the island even boasts a colony of Ligurian honey bees which are the world’s only pure-bred and disease-free population of this type of bee.
On Tuesday, NASA’s Terra satellite captured a view of Kangaroo Island showing one third of the land mass covered by burn scars or active fires. NASA estimates the fires have consumed 383,013 acres (155,000 hectares )and described it as “an ecological tragedy”.
Flinders Chase National Park’s island is home for koalas, seals, whales, kangaroos and the only wild population of platypus in South Australia.
The bushfires on the island started as lightning strikes in the park. “Ecologists within the park put estimates of the number of koalas that have perished in the fire at 25,000 which is half the island’s population of the popular animals,” NASA said. Australia’s National Parks and Wildlife Service closed Flinders Chase and other protected areas around Kangaroo Island as the fires spread.
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