French Animal Shelter Urges Climate Change Action As Fires Hit Local Wildlife
A French animal shelter is working to protect all the creatures it can amid raging wildfires that are killing off wildlife and destroying habitats. Workers also want action on climate change, before historic fires likes these become much more routine.
**Animals Find Refuge After French Wildfires**
REPORTER:
An animal carer squats down next to a deer in an enclosure—a survivor of raging forest fires that have wiped out wildlife in this corner of France. In this region, the Gironde, alone, 42,000 hectares are burned. As human evacuees start to go home, it’s becoming clear at this shelter that the animals have nowhere to return.
REPORTER:
The workers at this shelter are stunned by the scale of death—burrowing animals killed as they tried to wait out the fire in their dens, owls and other nocturnal creatures dying in the tree trunks where they hid from the flames. And more.
Venessa Pastor (SOUTH GIRONDE ANIMAL PARK CARER):
From what we've heard in the latest news it's really the larger animals that were able to run fast enough to escape. But most of the smaller mammals, reptiles and birds have either succumbed or been poisoned by the fumes. So, we know it's a major impact and we wanted to help at our level.
REPORTER:
And helping they are, with a stockpile of supplies for treating burns and other injuries and helping keep the animals fed and well.
REPORTER:
Weary farm animals can destress.
REPORTER:
Deer that escaped in a panic from the burning forests can spend a moment recovering.
REPORTER:
Even one surviving bird gets a safe place, for now.
REPORTER:
But the staff here aren’t just horrified by the toll of this wildfire season, France's worst on record: they see a future where this kind of ecological disaster is no longer an outlier.
Patrick Meng (MANAGER, SOUTH GIRONDE ANIMAL PARK):
And now, we're going to have to change our habits. We're going to have to change our way of doing things because this can't go on any longer and we have to realize that the climate is changing. We have intense heatwaves we have long periods without rain and if we want our biodiversity, our fauna and flora to continue to exist around us, and because we need them we're going to have to change our habits.
REPORTER:
For now, the shelter is simply doing what it can, providing an island of refuge amid a violently charred landscape. On a heating planet.
