What is going on in Australia ?

By: Marissa Martin

The fires in Australia have been burning for months , consuming nearly 18 million acres of land, causing thousands to evacuate and killing potentially millions of animals. There have been fires in every Australian state, but New South Wales has been hardest hit. Blazes have torn through bushland, wooded areas, and national parks like the Blue Mountains. Some of Australia's largest cities have also been affected, including Melbourne and Sydney,  where fires have damaged homes in the outer suburbs and thick plumes of smoke have blanketed the urban center. Each year there is a fire season during the Australian summer, with hot, dry weather making it easy for blazes to start and spread. Natural causes are to blame most of the time, like lightning strikes in drought-affected forests. Dry lightning was responsible for starting a number of fires in Victoria's East Gippsland region in late December, which then traveled more than 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in just five hours, according to state agency Victoria Emergency . One of the most concerns there is with the fires going on is the animals going extinct. More than 1 billion mammals, birds and reptiles nationwide some of them found nowhere else on Earth may have been affected or killed by the fires sweeping across Australia, according to a University of Sydney estimate. The potential toll is far greater when other types of animals are included.Recovery will probably be slower than for previous fires. Re-vegetation depends on rainfall, and that’s become so unpredictable. Tree hollows and nectar-producing trees, key resources for animals, take years or decades to recover.One concern is the future of a several migratory bird species that fly between Tasmania, Victoria and southern Queensland. They make pit stops along the coastal heathlands along the east coast, precisely where a lot of these fires have been happening. It’ll be years before those habitats are back in production as stop-over points for migratory birds.Other animals are being pushed closer to extinction. There are real concerns for the brush-tailed rock wallaby, and the Kangaroo Island dunnart — a small marsupial — which has lost nearly all of its habitat. Habitats for the glossy black cockatoos on Kangaroo Island have also taken a really hard hit. And people are very concerned about a number of freshwater fish, which are vulnerable to the silt or soot slugs that go down a river after a fire. There’s things that can be done to help out Australia in this time of need for them , things such as funding and donating as much as possible .