I posted a lot about the climate emergency as it took hold here, but for personal reasons I dropped that channel last year and started over with a channel that's much more private by default.
I live on a farm that borders the Blue Mountains World Heritage area. We endured decades long droughts, the bushfires (which took out somewhere around 20-30% of the woodlands on the continent and closer to 80-90% along the eastern side of the continent), then we've had a couple of rounds of apocalyptic floods and a number of species plagues of biblical proportions (locusts and rodents for example) all while simultaneously dealing with waves of human pandemics and dust storms at continental scales.
Anyway, that's the background. But let me emphasize the part that over a billion animals died right over there (points finger) and for many of the survivors, their habitat will be uninhabitable for years to come. The survivors migrated anywhere that wasn't destroyed and many ended up on farms throughout the region. Some in pretty bad shape. We built an informal network of farmers and volunteers who have stepped up to rescue and provide shelter to animals. Had to. We were all overwhelmed. Kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, wombats, possums, echidnas, turtles, snakes, rats, birds of all kinds, bats, and even feral dogs and cats. There are wild emus and peacocks just up the road. Many critters have come through our property in the aftermath and some of the larger farms set up facilities specifically to house and care for the survivors. I would've built a wombat rescue centre personally (we see a lot of those) except these are large burrowing creatures and you need a chain link fence around a concrete platform that's buried 2 metres in the earth to contain them for rehabilitation. They can dig through anything else. I couldn't afford to do this, but one of our friends could and did - so we take injured wombats there instead. I know a number of people that deal specifically with kangaroo rescues. And if we don't know somebody personally, we take them to the local veterinary clinic as their help network spreads even wider.
But let's talk about snakes for a moment. During the bushfires, a copperhead sought shelter in our chicken coop. I was a bit stressed about this as I had to enter the coop to feed them every day, and kept worrying about this snake that had taken up residence, but left it alone. It eventually died there. When I inspected closer, it had burns all over its body. Poor bugger. Last year another copperhead got itself caught in our "snake-proof" fence and couldn't extricate itself. At the time I left it alone, thinking that I should just let nature run its course. Birds subsequently attacked it and pecked it apart as it couldn't run or hide. It died a horrible death, and it was all my fault - I built the fence. About six months ago another one got stuck in the same fence. My wife and I delicately cut the fence out around it to set it free. None of these critters deserved what happened to them. They didn't harm or even threaten anybody. They were just trying to stay alive.
All of this has changed me in a fundamental way. I used to be one of those armchair climate change activists worried about the collapse of earth's ecosystems in 2050, but no longer. Our predictions of what was going to happen in 2050 are happening today. The only thing we can individually do is - just. save. lives.
