A wildlife expert has warned that we must take action to help stabilise our planet's increasingly erratic weather systems, saying she believes the recent wildfires that have ravaged the Australian bush are signs of 'Mother Nature declaring war on us'.
Deborah Tabart OAM, the chairman of the Australian Koala Foundation, has seen the destruction of the wildfires tearing through the Australian landscape first-hand, and says the catastrophic scenes are like those of a 'war zone'- and should be treated as such.
Tabart, who has been working at the forefront of conservation for more than three decades, said she'd felt it coming, explaining there had been a strange feeling in the atmosphere during the lead-up to the devastating bushfires.
Speaking to LADbible, she said: "This year I just had this incredible sense of foreboding. You could smell this fire coming.
Advert
"There something weird about the wind, there was something weird about the temperatures. There was just no moisture in the air.
"It's hard to articulate, but I've been in the bush for 31 years. I know how it feels."
The fires have broken out in several areas of Australia, but Queensland and New South Wales are among the regions that have been the most badly-hit - with an area covering more than 1,650,000 hectares burnt out across the latter state.
With no water in the creeks or rivers to cut through the landscape, Tabart said there's nothing to stop the fires, which have in turn been able to gather both speed and strength as they pass through.
Saying she hasn't felt a drop of rain for five months, Tabart continued: "One scientist who used to work for us - he's now a consultant - has been out in the bush for the last three days.
Advert
"He said he can't find anything alive. It's devastating."
She added: "I love the bush - in fact I live in the bush.
"I've got kookaburras and yellow-crested cockatoos in my garden - I get so much joy out of this. I just can't bear that those things are being burnt to death."
Advert
Meanwhile, animals have not only lost their habitats, but many have also died - including Lewis the koala, who sadly had to be put down a week after being saved from the fires near Port Macquarie, New South Wales.
While the marsupials have been killed off in their hundreds, some people have questioned Tabart's use of the term 'functionally extinct' to describe the Australian koala population, arguing that it's something of an overstatement as the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List lists them only as 'vulnerable'.
Advert
But the koala conservationist has defended her phrasing, which she first issued in a press release in May this year, arguing that the government had been the first to use the term back in 2016.
Saying she knows things are 'not fine', Tabart said: "If I'm wrong about them being functionally extinct, I'm happy to be wrong. But I won't be happy unless I've said it."
Having put a Koala Protection Act to the Australian government, she said it's now down to those in power, not just Down Under, but throughout the globe.
"Our leaders need to realise that this is Mother Nature declaring war on us," Tabart warned.
Advert
"Our world is in trouble."
Featured Image Credit:
Topics: World News, News, Animals, Australia