Australia's bushfire animal rescue networks grow

During Australia’s catastrophic Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020, emergency responders focused on human life and property. However, there were few systems in place to protect wildlife or evacuate and care for domestic animals during and after the fires. This gap in disaster planning exposed a critical need for better animal rescue strategies.

Neighbors, wildlife carers, veterinarians, landholders and volunteers rapidly organized evacuations, rescue efforts, feeding stations and supply networks. Their actions demonstrated the power of local knowledge and grassroots coordination in saving animals.

Vanessa Hartley, a landholder in New South Wales, rehabilitates abused and surrendered horses. When the fires threatened her property, she posted a message on Facebook asking for help. Within an hour, neighbors and strangers arrived with trucks and horse trailers, evacuating all 19 of her horses. After the fires, Hartley built water and feeding stations for the surviving wildlife, including wallabies, kangaroos, greater gliders, quolls and birds.

According to remote-sensing data, more than 30 million hectares burned across the continent during the Black Summer fires. Researchers estimated that nearly 3 billion vertebrates and up to 240 trillion invertebrates were killed, injured, displaced or otherwise affected by the fires.

While emergency systems focused on protecting people and property, thousands of volunteers quickly built their own networks to care for wildlife and domestic animals that were ignored in official bushfire planning.

Community-led efforts

Danielle Celermajer, a professor of sociology at the University of Sydney, lived on a multispecies sanctuary during the Black Summer bushfires. When the Currowan State Forest Fire threatened her property, she turned to Facebook for help. Within hours, trucks arrived to evacuate her animals.

Celermajer later teamed up with an interdisciplinary group of academics to create a major research project published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science in 2025. They examined how communities self-organized to care for wildlife, domestic and companion animals during the fires.

The research found that communities were often exceptionally well positioned to respond because of their local knowledge and existing relationships. These 'coordinating mechanisms' are key. The team developed a proof-of-concept app to connect people needing assistance with those offering resources such as transport, feed, shelter or animal care.

Learning more about fire and wildlife

Animals of all kinds were fed, watered or given emergency vet assistance during the fires. Platypus were rescued from dried-out creeks, pythons were given water, and endangered Spencer’s tree frogs were taken into a captive-breeding program.

Experts agree that there is much more to learn about the best ways to help animals during and after fires. Scientists divide fire impacts into two categories: indirect effects such as habitat destruction and food shortages, and direct effects such as survival during the fire itself.

Phil Zylstra, a professor of fire ecology at Curtin University, notes that the longstanding assumption that many animals are able to escape fires may not be true. Slower-moving animals or those that rely on climbing into treetops, like koalas and greater gliders, are especially at risk. His research on greater gliders shows that tree hollows become deadly traps during fires as flames enter cavities and burn upward.

Other animals flee heat and smoke, only to find themselves displaced into already crowded habitat or in human settlements. Smoke itself is an underappreciated threat, with researchers documenting deaths among smoky mice during the Black Summer fires.