“Firebugs” Commit Mass Cruelty
As “shoplifters” are really thieves, “firebugs” are really arsonists who cause much more damage than we seem to acknowledge. When it is stated after a bushfire that “thankfully there was no damage to life or property“, we forget about the immense cost to animal life.
Just a one acre fire will burn literally millions of animals from insects and spiders to skinks, lizards, snakes, and nesting birds and all the small mammals that cannot flee, like echidnas, koalas and possums. And then there is the damage to the animals’ homes and food supply, and of course the destruction of plants and other life.
We know that much of the Australian bush has evolved to recover from bushfire, but traditionally such fires were much cooler, slow burning fires that occurred in the Spring and which reduced fuel loads. Now after massive vegetation clearing we have islands of thick scrub, and the fires are hot, fast and intense and kill all life above and below the soil.
The Ash Wednesday Fires in South Australia and Victoria in 1983 burnt 2,000 square kilometres. 260,000 farm animals died or had to be destroyed. And billions of wildlife perished, as well as their habitats.
Arsonists responsible for bushfires must be made accountable for the immense suffering they cause, even when “property” is not damaged.
2 comments January 5th, 2007