A Dog Named Bear Braves Australian Wildfires To Rescue Koalas

Nov 21, 2019 by apost team

Bear is a Border Collie-Koolie mix that has had quite a storied life. His first set of owners abandoned him and he ended up in a shelter. Sunshine Coast University noticed his incredible potential as a working dog and trained him to sniff out and rescue koalas.

Currently, he is on loan to Australian fire departments and is using his intense energy and powerful nose to sniff out and save koalas from the wildfires. He is outfitted with special socks to protect his paws from the intense heat and is being sent into burned areas to locate koalas at risk. When he finds one, he alerts his handler, Romane Cristescu, who springs into action to save the endangered animal.

"With climate change, habitat loss and diseases, koalas are just facing too many threats. Those fires are just one of the many things threatening them so we really need to be better at protecting them," Romane said to Sky News.

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The current fires have burned over 2.5 million acres, killed four people, and destroyed hundreds of homes. The fires are presenting a new challenge to the already threatened koalas.

Koalas have been declared "functionally extinct" by the Queensland Minister for the Environment. Climate change and habitat destruction have reduced their population in the wild to fewer than 100,000, possibly as few as 43,000, individuals as per the Australia Koala Foundation.

The iconic Australian animal spends its days eating eucalyptus leaves and sleeping. These marsupials have no natural predators but they have been struggling to adapt to humanity's destruction of their normally quiet forested homes. They cannot move fast enough to flee from wildfires or dodge vehicles, and they cannot adapt to eating foods other than their beloved eucalyptus leaves.

This story of a previously abandoned dog who found a new purpose in life definitely deserves to be spread far and wide.