Artist Draws Incredible Work In Sand To Honour Dead Wildlife From Bushfires

Artists from around Australia have been putting their skills to work to reflect on the effects of the bushfire crisis.

There have been loads of different murals, illustrations and creations that dig deep into just how devastating the last few months have been.

But one artist has blown people away with work that commemorates the wildlife to have perished since September.

Bushfires are rumoured to have killed more than a billion animals, ranging from insects all the way up to cattle, kangaroos and koalas.

That's why an artist who works under the name of Breathe A Blue Ocean decided to immortalise them in a poignant piece of work, using nothing more than sand.

The artist visited Geelong and South Coast beaches during a time where bushfire smoke hung in the air, and went on to create this beautiful and incredibly large picture of a koala.

Breathe A Blue Ocean wrote on Instagram: "In this photo smoke over powers the afternoon sun and I am standing in the artwork smelling the smoke the fire."

There's no telling how long it took the artist to create the amazing image or how long it will last in the sand, but they took some epic shots of it with a drone to show just how large it is.

They told ABC: "I don't count steps or use GPS or drones to guide me. It's a freestyle type of drawing method, I build it piece by piece.

"It's about vision and emotion and this piece was how I envisioned the wildlife in Australia's fires."

We're still waiting to learn the exact figures of how damaging the bushfires have been to wildlife populations in affected areas.

Chris Dickman, an ecologist at the University of Sydney, said that his original figure of 480 million animals was conservative - and only included those in the state of New South Wales (NSW).

The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital

Speaking to Huffington Post, he said: "The original figure - the 480m - was based on mammals, birds and reptiles for which we do have densities, and that figure now is a little bit out of date. It's over 800m given the extent of the fires now - in New South Wales alone.

"If 800m sounds a lot, it's not all the animals in the firing line."

According to the news outlet, the original figure was around half a billion, but that only referred to the area of NSW and did not include bats, frogs or invertebrates. With those numbers included, Dickman said that the amount of dead animals exceeds one billion 'without any doubt at all'.

Topics: News, Bushfires, Interesting, Animals, Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie