NASA Reveals One Third of Kangaroo Island is Already Burnt
The extent of damage by fire on the Kangaroo Island in South Australia was so high that it was easily caught by NASA’s Terra satellite recently.
According to the recently released satellite images by NASA, one-third of the land in the Australian island, popularly known as ‘Kangaroo Island’, home of the country’s unique and endangered wildlife has been scorched by recent bushfires.
The extent of damage by fire on the Kangaroo Island in South Australia was so high that it was easily caught by NASA’s Terra satellite recently. The devastation is clearly visible; with brown burn scars and active fires, which is once known for its lush green identity.
NASA estimates that 155,000 hectares of land, which is about 600 square miles of the island has been consumed by the recent fires and declared it as “an ecological tragedy”.
Located at the southern coast of Australia, Kangaroo Island is famous for its untouched wilderness. It contains protected nature reserves along with native wildlife, such as koalas, sea lions and diverse species of bird.
The island is also home to the endangered small marsupials, found only on the island and glossy black cockatoo, which have been brought back to life from the brink of extinction in the past two decades.
Since December, devastating blazes have been ripping through the Australian island, which has so far killed two people, destroying more than 56 homes and damaging hundreds of buildings.
The image released by NASA has shown that the most affected areas were in the western part of the island, which includes the Flinders Chase National Park, where the fire first started after by a lightning strike. The park is popular among wildlife lovers because of the duck-billed platypus, which is one of Australia’s most beloved species.
According to an estimate by ecologists, about 25,000 koalas on Kangaroo Island have died in the recent bush fires, which also account for half of the island’s population of the marsupials.
The wild fires have been burning across Australia for months continuously, razing homes and wiping out town after town. Across the country, more than 7.3 million hectares (28,185 square miles) of land have so far burnt. Most of the areas are bush land, forests and national parks, having the country’s most unique wildlife.
According to a report by the ecologists at the University of Sydney, half a billion animals in the state of New South Wales have been affected by the fires, with millions of innocent animals already dead.