Islanders told to flee Australia bushfire

MELBOURNE－Residents of a coastal township on Australia's World Heritage-listed Fraser Island were told to evacuate on Sunday as a bushfire approached.

Since it was sparked by an illegal campfire seven weeks ago, the blaze has blackened half the island off Australia's eastern coast, which is at the far southern end of the Great Barrier Reef and famed for its tropical rainforest on sand dunes, and inland lakes.

Residents of Happy Valley had a small reprieve after the blaze lessened in intensity on Sunday afternoon, Queensland State Emergency Services Commissioner Greg Leach told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"We now don't anticipate that the fire will run into the Happy Valley settlement today but we'll continue to work hard," Leach said.

"We will continue to have aircraft on the fire from first light tomorrow to try and knock that fire down as best we can."

Officials said that there were more than 90 personnel, 38 vehicles and 17 aircraft working on Fraser Island, including a large air tanker based in the state for the bushfire season and another tanker on the way from neighboring New South Wales state.

Queensland's emergency services urged residents to evacuate late on Sunday afternoon. "Leaving immediately is the safest option, as it will soon be too dangerous to drive," the state's Fire and Emergency Services said on social media. "Any persons in the vicinity of Happy Valley township should leave the area."

Peak conditions

Baking temperatures across Queensland last week caused peak bushfire conditions, with emergency services attending to 48 fires, Leach said.

Australia has been experiencing hotter and longer summers, with last season dubbed "Black Summer "by Prime Minister Scott Morrison due to unusually prolonged and intense bushfires that burned huge tracts of land and killed 33 people.

More than 60,000 koalas were killed, injured or displaced last summer, according to a study by the World Wide Fund, or WWF, said.

Even before the fires, koala habitats had been in rapid decline due to land clearing for agriculture, urban development, mining and forestry.

A 2016 report by a panel of koala experts had put the koala population in Australia at 329,000 but there have been bushfires annually since then, reducing the number further.

"That (60,000 figure) is a devastating number for a species that was already sliding toward extinction in eastern Australia. We cannot afford to lose koalas on our watch," WWF-Australia Chief Executive Dermot O'Gorman said in the report.

The WWF aims to double the number of koalas in eastern Australia by 2050. The plan includes a trial of drones to disperse seeds of eucalyptus trees which provide both food and shelter for koalas, and the establishment of a fund to encourage landowners to create koala safe havens.

Agencies via Xinhua