First published January 9, 2020.
During Australia's Black Summer bushfires, the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland reached a milestone: its 90,000th patient. According to Robert Irwin, that patient was an orphaned platypus named Ollie. The number is a lifetime total, counting every animal the hospital has cared for since it opened in 2004, not 90,000 victims of the 2019–20 fires alone. Even so, it shows the scale of the work Steve Irwin's family has kept going since his death.
In early January 2020, as fires burned across several states, Terri, Bindi and Robert Irwin used interviews and social media to ask for help for wildlife and to show what their vets were seeing. This article explains what the hospital is, what the family said and did, and what the final figures from that fire season tell us.
A family carrying on Steve Irwin's work
Steve Irwin became world famous through the documentary series The Crocodile Hunter, which ran from 1996 to 2004. He died on 4 September 2006 after being pierced by a stingray barb while filming on the Great Barrier Reef. His wife Terri became the sole owner of Australia Zoo, and their children Bindi and Robert grew up working alongside her.
An earlier family portrait shows Steve with Terri, who is holding baby Robert, and a young Bindi perched on his knee. The zoo began in 1970 as a small reptile park run by Steve's parents, Bob and Lyn Irwin, and took the name Australia Zoo in 1998.
Years later, Robert, Terri and Bindi pose with two large pythons in the zoo grounds. Handling and talking about reptiles remains a big part of how the family introduces visitors to Australian wildlife.
Here the three sit with a pair of curious meerkats. Today the family still runs the zoo, with Bindi as chief executive and Robert part of the management team.
What the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital does
The hospital sits next to the zoo at Beerwah, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. It started in 2004 in a converted avocado packing shed with a single operating room. A purpose-built hospital opened in 2008 and can care for up to 10,000 animals a year. It is named in honour of Lyn Irwin, Steve's mother, who died in a car crash in 2000.
Most patients are native wildlife: koalas hit by cars or attacked by dogs, sea turtles, possums, birds, reptiles and flying foxes. After treatment the goal is always release back into the wild. Reaching 90,000 patients in about 16 years gives a sense of how many injured animals pass through a single well-equipped hospital.
A koala recovering at the hospital clings to a branch with a brightly decorated cast on its arm. Colourful casts are a common sight at wildlife hospitals, and they make even a long recovery look a little more cheerful.
Bindi Irwin sits with another koala patient wearing a black cast decorated with a skull and crossbones. Photos like this, shared on the family's accounts, helped raise awareness and donations during the fire season.
The Black Summer bushfires
The 2019–20 fire season, often called Black Summer, was one of the worst in Australia's recorded history. Fires burned from late 2019 into early 2020 across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and beyond.
Thick smoke billows above a line of burning trees. Huge smoke columns like this could create their own weather, making the fires harder to predict and fight.
Glowing embers cover a forest road at night while fire vehicles wait further along. Ember attack, where burning fragments are blown ahead of the main fire, is one of the main ways bushfires jump roads and reach homes.
A single tree burns in the darkness. Eucalyptus forests carry oily leaves and loose bark, which help fires spread quickly through the canopy.
The figures published in early January 2020, when the original version of this story circulated, were still growing. At that time officials spoke of around 6.3 million hectares burned across the country, about 2,500 buildings including more than 1,300 homes, and 24 deaths. By the end of the season, estimates of the total area burned across Australia reached about 24 million hectares. More than 3,000 buildings were lost and 33 people died directly in the fires, with hundreds more deaths later linked to smoke.
The toll on wildlife
Animals were hit especially hard. In early January, ecologists at the University of Sydney estimated that about 480 million mammals, birds and reptiles had been affected in New South Wales alone, and warned the true number was likely higher. Later studies put the national figure at around three billion animals killed or displaced, most of them reptiles.
Koalas became the face of the crisis. Reports at the time suggested that up to a third of the koalas in parts of New South Wales may have died. Terri Irwin reportedly said that around 25,000 koalas had been lost on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, where roughly a third of the island burned. Exact counts were impossible during the fires, so such numbers should be read as early estimates rather than final tallies.
Other species suffered too. The grey-headed flying fox, a native bat listed as vulnerable, was already under strain from drought and earlier fires, and lost more of the forest it depends on for food.
Bindi shared this photo of a possum with singed fur that was brought to the hospital after the fires. According to her post, the possum did not survive despite the team's care. Burns, smoke inhalation and dehydration made many rescued animals very hard to save.
What Bindi and Robert shared
On 2 January 2020 Bindi posted on Instagram about the fires, writing that her heart broke for the people and wildlife who had lost so much, and promising that her family would keep doing all it could to help. Robert shared updates from the hospital, including the 90,000th patient.
Bindi Irwin (@bindisueirwin) on
Terri and Robert also appeared on CNN in an Anderson Cooper Full Circle segment, explaining how the fires were affecting vulnerable species and how people abroad could help through donations to rescue groups and hospitals.
The fires reached a global audience at the Golden Globes on 5 January 2020, when several winners and presenters used their time on stage to talk about Australia and climate change.
How people can still help wildlife hospitals
The last major fires were contained by late February and early March 2020, but the work of wildlife hospitals continues every year. A few simple steps make a real difference:
- Donate to established groups. Wildlife hospitals and licensed carers rely heavily on public funding for medicines, food and staff.
- Know who to call. In Australia, injured wildlife can be reported to local rescue hotlines or the nearest vet, many of whom treat injured native animals free of charge.
- Drive carefully at dawn and dusk. Cars remain one of the biggest causes of injury for koalas, kangaroos and wombats.
- Leave water out in hot weather. A shallow dish with a stick or stone for small creatures to climb out helps birds and mammals during heatwaves.
Steve Irwin's message was always that people protect what they love. By treating its 90,000th patient in the middle of a national disaster, the hospital named after his mother showed that his family has kept that idea at the centre of their work.
Sources: Wikipedia: Australia Zoo; KAIT/CNN: The Irwin family has saved 90,000 animals (6 January 2020); Wikipedia: 2019–20 Australian bushfire season; Bindi Irwin on Instagram, 2 January 2020. Photos: Australia Zoo and the Irwin family.
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