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(BIRD CHIRPS)

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NARRATOR: Australia has always been a land of extremes.

(BIRDS CHIRP)

Its unique wildlife has adapted

to the vagaries of severe weather.

For millennia, fire is a force

that has shaped the nature of Australia.

But in 2019...

came the Black Summer.

The most savage fire season in recorded history...

signified a new phase in the climate crisis.

WOMAN: To see these places, one after each other, be destroyed,

it's devastating.

What has been lost? What is left now?

Uh, have we lost whole animal cultures?

MAN: It's taken a lot from Australia.

I think that's why we're seeing this huge reaction of love for the wildlife here.

People want to help, people want to care.

We've gotta help them come back and make things better for when they do come back.

Over the course of a year we chart the recovery...

..after the wild fires.

For three years, record-breaking droughts

have had Australia in their grip.

Rivers have disappeared,

lakes vaporised...

..and forests turned tinder dry.

2019 is recorded as the hottest and driest year in the history books.

Extreme fire danger is declared two months earlier than a typical year.

MAN ON RADIO: There is a heightened risk of a fire-generated storm.

(LIGHTNING CRACKLES)

In August, dry lightning sparks the first fire.

(SQUAWKING)

Ancient forest, rich with biodiversity, ignites.

These are the forest bastions

from which all of Australia's unique marsupials evolved.

(FIRE CRACKLES)

Now their world is on fire.

(FIRE CRACKLES)

FIREFIGHTER OVER RADIO: 431. Request your assistance, over.(SIREN WAILS)

REPORTER: A lightning strike sparked one of the biggest bushfires

the world has ever seen.

REPORTER: A state of emergency has been declared,

crews calling the conditions as bad as it gets.

(WHOOSHING AND ROARING)

In places, the fires become so violent,

they create their own weather.

(RUMBLING AND ROARING)

REPORTER: The scale of this emergency is hard to get your head around.

The largest fire front in the country's history.

From Queensland...

..into Western Australia,

Victoria...

to New South Wales.

(ROARING)

(SIREN WAILS)

(HORN BLARES)

It feels like the whole continent is on fire.

Off the coast of South Australia,

a blaze consumes half of Kangaroo Island,

home to 50,000 koalas.

For the slow-moving tree dweller,

there's no escape.

At the western tip of the island,

Shona and Rick Fisher live on a small acreage.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

With fires still burning, they check on their horses.

But they soon discover it's the wildlife that needs their help.

Looking, looking, looking.Over here, there might be some in the corner.

REPORTER: It's difficult to gauge the full impact on the koala population,

but here they fear it could be catastrophic.

There doesn't seem to be anyone searching at this end.

We've become the koala people, I suppose.

Rick and Shona assess if koalas can stay

or if they need to be rescued.

(MURMURS SOFTLY)

Might need some water.

Feet are burnt.

Can't put any weight on the back legs.

Oh, poor Mama, hey? You poor Mama.

We only wanna take the ones that can't climb,

that need medical treatment.

Yes.

Sometimes they're asking for help. They almost walk up to you.

But that's why we're out here. We're trying to save some of them.

How are you, eh?

Hey, little fella.

Well, this little boy's good, he can climb.

For many...it's too late.

Mum.

He's dead.He's dead?Mm-hm. Hey, sweetheart, hm?

Oh, this is one of the saddest things I've seen.

For her to be sitting here with her dead baby, that's just...

It's horrible, so... But um...

It's heartbreaking.

The mother's best chance of survival

now rests in the hands of Shona and Rick.

(GROWLS)But even now, she's not ready to leave her baby behind.

She's obviously traumatised, she's lost her baby.

(GROWLS AND GRUNTS)

(GRUNTS)

(GRUNTS)

Over the days following the fire,

Rick and Shona pick up over 120 koalas to take into care.

(GRUNTS SOFTLY)

OK, are you done there?Yep. OK, no sweat, that's good.

As fires still burn,

Shona and Rick head to a makeshift koala hospital on the island.

You're a pretty girl.

(CHUCKLING)Yeah. WOMAN: ..and both hind paws.

Vets, volunteers and defence force soldiers

are on hand to treat the injured animals.

..a number. And gonna put some cream on.

Under anaesthetic, the mother is assessed and treated for burns.

I think that's the one that had the baby.

Had a baby?The baby died. She was sitting next to it on the ground.

WOMAN: Are you all right, sweetie? Yeah.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

After the fires, more than 600 koalas

are given critical care in this emergency centre.

Well, today we're done, we've handed them in

and kept an eye on them and found out how they're going.

The mother koala that we found with the dead baby,

they're confident that she's gonna be fine.

She's got burns on all four feet,

but they're quite confident that she'll be OK.

At least 40,000 koalas died in the bushfire that ravaged the island.

Those that survived, lost 80% of their habitat.

Few will ever return home.

It's a story repeated across the continent.

Before the fires, the majestic forests

of the New South Wales coast once stood as cathedrals,

reaching all the way to the sea.

(BIRDS CHIRRUP AND SQUAWK)

Four weeks after the fires,

the forests have become a desolate place.

Unrecognisable.

Across the Black Summer, 20 million hectares

have been reduced to ash in the space of a few months.

11,000 individual fires burnt through New South Wales alone.

The scale of the crisis is hard to fathom.

An area larger than England has been razed.

Survivors emerge into a landscape

stripped of food, water and shelter.

In the Southern Highlands,

American naturalist John Creighton searches for wombats

he's monitored for the last two years.

The first morning of the fire, this place was still smoking.

The ground was ash. Not a single leaf.

Trees were still smouldering.

There was no life. Not a single bird.

It was a shocking, shocking sight.

And my hope is those wombats that have found safety in that area

are still there and have survived this fire.

Instead, he finds a graveyard.

This is definitely wombat bones.

That's a hip bone.

All right, so this wombat would have been caught outside of its burrow

and I would say intense heat - died instantly.

And the temperatures that... To bring a bone to this nature

would've been crematorium temperatures.

Shocking. It's really just shocking for this poor little guy.

Less optimistic, John resumes his search.

He knows many of the burrows in this area.

Finally, hope.

Sshp, sshp!

Sshp-sshp-sshp!

Sshp-sshp-sshp!

Sshp ssssshp!

The noise I'm making is a greeting sound for the wombats.

And, if she trusts me,

she'll come out.

Sshp, sshp.

Sshp!

Sshp, sshp.

(SOFT RUSTLING)

Some of those burrows, they're 4, 10, 15, 20m long.

So, by staying in their burrows, they would've made it through.

Some of the other animals would've run into those burrows.

I think the echidna and the goanna.

I don't think the wombat was shepherding them and saying,

"Come on in", but the animals know where to go to get safe.

The ones that did come out of their burrows and survive,

they were left with a world with no food, no water.

It wouldn't have made much sense to them

and they would've eventually walked, trying to find new food.

The other ones that didn't, or couldn't,

would have died of thirst or starvation.

It's been a good six weeks since the fire has passed

and still no real sign of edible, sustainable growth.

Things are growing back and there's shoots on trees and things coming up,

but this is not the stuff the wombat would eat.

At dusk, John lays out food for the forest survivors.

The scent carries through the burnt bush as an invitation.

Nature will come back.

It's happening already, but it's going to take time.

In the Hunter Valley region,

the extreme summer is taking its toll.

Even where fire didn't reach, native animals are struggling.

With its webbed feet,

the platypus is not suited for travel over land.

But drought is forcing it to search for the last of the water.

Further upstream, staff from a nearby animal sanctuary

are scouring the remaining puddles.

Rare Manning River turtles are found hunkered down in the mud,

trying to keep cool as the river dries.

For many, it's too late.

I've just walked the entire riverbed

and found countless turtles that are dead...

and two dead platypus.

So, I think it hurts just a little bit more

because we've just missed them by this much.

They've only just died.

Wildlife carer Hayley Shute

continues searching for survivors, in dire conditions.

'I've never seen a drought like this before.

I've never seen a river system in this kind of condition.

I can't put words to describe how devastating it is

and how much everything needs water.'

So, to see this, it's actually heartbreaking.

Nine platypus are found still alive.

The team relocates the healthy ones into deeper pools

and take five of the most fragile into care.

Nearby, at the Wandandian Kangaroo and Wallaby Sanctuary,

the fires came right to the fence-line.

WOMAN: Well, I was thinking that and then I was like...

Putting animals before their own safety,

staff and volunteers return to receive an influx of injured roos.

That's for Tikki.Flame's being fed.

She's being fed now?Yeah. Ash is being fed.

The injured roos are given fire-related names

like Ash, Smoky and Sparkles.

Burnt feet are the most common injury,

but even stress can be a killer.

Despite constant care, few adults survive fire trauma.

Orphan joeys are, surprisingly, more resilient.

There you go, sweetheart.

This is Sandy, who was orphaned

when her mum needed to be euthanised because she was badly injured.

She got called Sandy cos Mum's pouch had a lot of sand. (LAUGHS)

She was covered in sand when she came out.

Cos she's so perfect, she's been a little bit of respite

amongst all the others that are so badly injured.

She's got the most perfect feet. Everyone loves her.

Come on, come and get your milk.

(CLICKS TONGUE) Come on.

Come on, come and get your milk.

For the young orphans, human surrogates and formula milk

offer them a fighting chance.

It's difficult for kangaroos to bounce back from burns.

Infection moves quickly into bones.

That's closed up, but given that that's

one of her major weight-bearing points there,

we'll probably keep bandaging that for a little bit longer.

Keeping this roo on her feet is doubly important.

This one should still have a little joey.

Only a jellybean.

As months pass, attention shifts from caring for the injured

to taking stock of the loss.

The inferno that tore through the South Endeavour Conservation Reserve

at Bezzants Lease

burned with such intensity,

it's unclear if anything survived.

Finding hidden signs of life takes detective work...

..and camera traps are a perfect tool.

My standardised 50 is just here.

Top of the camera at 50.

Ecologists Eridani and Sabrina

from Australian Wildlife Conservancy,

set up cameras with the hope of recording nocturnal species.

'So, we use a general bait, which is contained in a canister.

It's peanut butter, rolled oats, sardines.

So, it's attractive to both small mammals

and carnivorous marsupials.'

Even Australians don't often get a chance to see

the amazing diversity of fauna in Australia.

So, using camera traps is a way that we can see

what's out there and find out what they do in their night-time lives.

The high-altitude forests of the New England Tablelands

are renowned for their biodiversity.

But the inhabitants are secretive,

even in the best of times.

Naturalists Jasmine and Ritchie

are searching the lower swamplands.

This requires laying pitfall traps.

I think there's a chance we'll find something.

Not optimistic, but hopeful.

But traps left out overnight

are not revealing any reptiles or small mammals either.

Zero out of 25, not great.Yeah.

But Jasmine and Ritchie have one more trick in their tool kit.

So, I reckon between these two trees...Yep.

..will be blocking the flyway.Yep.

Have you got yours lined up?Yep.

This is a harp trap.

So, it is how we trap microbat species.

Yep.Just like this?Yep.

Mouse-sized microbats make up one-fifth

of all Australian mammals.

But whether they've survived the blaze is still unknown.

It will take nightfall to find out.

(CHIRRUPING AND CROAKING)

I'll just come this side.

Oh, my God.

Oh, yes!We've got a bat!A little bat.

Good job.Excellent.

Aw, aren't you lovely?

Yeah, it's really cute.

Bats go into torpor during the day,

which is a little mini hibernation

that they do to reserve energy.

And they have actually found that bats will wake up from torpor

when they smell smoke.

If the fire came close to him then he would've fled.Yeah, right.

Ooh, looks like he's had an injury.

So, this is an injury is it, this difference in colour?

Yep, so that's all scar tissue that's healing now.

Yeah, so I think it has been injured in the fires.

So, him moving his lips there, he's echo-locating.

He's trying to figure out what's going on around him.

So, he's getting ready to fly off.

Yeah, it's probably time to let him go.

Come on, buddy, time to go. (CHUCKLES)

Oh! That was quick.

It's a good sign to find microbats.

It's an indicator the insect biomass is recovering too.

After several weeks, Eridani and Sabrina return.

Today we've come back to collect those traps

and just see what's on them.

(BIRDSONG AND CHIRRUPING)

All right.

OK, let's have a look, see what we've got in the last three weeks.

That's a swampy.Yep.

Echidna!

Quoll!Hey!(BOTH LAUGH)

That's great. Spotted-tail quoll. Oh!

Oh, he wants in.Oh.He really wants in to the bait.

Give me the bait!Yeah, it is really exciting

to see spotted-tailed quolls.

They're a listed threatened species.

What? Whose ear is that?Who's that? Oh, I don't know.

Who are you?What is that?

Oh, it's a wombat!A wombat! (BOTH LAUGH)

Oh, my goodness!He takes up the whole...He's enormous!

(BOTH LAUGH)

I mean, that's a really great suite of animals.

It's really encouraging and heartening to see these animals on camera traps.

But they are still the larger species

that have the ability to find refuge.

The critical part is continuing surveying

to find out if smaller mammals and reptiles are still here.

But the camera trap has also captured a worrying sign.

Oh.Oh, feral cat. That's not cool.

For animals that have survived,

feral cats are probably one of the biggest problems.

It's known that particularly feral cats

will use fire scars to hunt because their prey items are exposed.

Another one.Oh, a different one. So, there's at least two there.

And another one.Yeah.

So, there's quite a few out there.

Cats have spread to 99% of Australia

and kill 1.5 billion native animals every year.

Australia's wild creatures are especially vulnerable

in the barren aftermath,

where there are few places to hide.

In the fire-ravaged Barrington Range,

conservationist Tim Faulkner

helps one of the last populations of brush-tailed rock-wallabies.

For the past six months,

we've been providing food, or food drops,

to about four known little wallaby hotspots.

Without a doubt, if we hadn't brought food here

at least ten wallabies that live on this outcrop would've perished.

Of the 15 species of rock-wallaby in Australia,

most have disappeared from their original range...

..due to feral predators and land clearing.

Rock outcrops, like tiny islands,

are where the brush-tailed rock-wallaby hangs on.

But the population is teetering.

With 80% of rock-wallaby habitat being burnt

it means areas like this are now critical.

When you have an enclave like this, that's fragmented,

it becomes all the more precious.

This forest here as we stand, it's been burnt,

it's regrowing and that looks pretty.

It's a bit of green. But it is an ecological ghost town.

And it was before the fires.

Its entire mammal suite has disappeared,

other than kangaroos, wombats and species that are too big

for the feral fox or feral cat to eat.

It's lost all of its natives.

Australia has the worst mammal extinction rate on earth.

And over 90% of all our extinctions

are related to the introduced feral fox and feral cat.

Let's step back 200 years to this forest right here.

Just in this small area, let's say the size of half a football field,

we would've had one bandicoot, one bettong,

one potoroo, one small wallaby.

We would've had a predator, like a quoll.

An overlapping Tassie devil 3,000 years ago.

All gone.

Let's drop down another scale. Native rodents - they're gone.

With that have gone the predators.

There's no tiger snakes. There's no pythons.

There's no lace monitors. The whole thing is just in collapse.

And I go along here and flip a hundred rocks

and I won't find one small skink.

And there used to be thousands.

So, in an area just the size of half a football field,

the overall biomass of animals that has gone is just unbelievable.

And again, look here now. It's an empty forest.

With their absence, our whole forest floor builds up in debris,

because there's nothing turning it over and turning it into soil.

We've lost that. So, when a fire starts,

it's got so much fuel on the ground.

That fuel burns. And the hotter it burns,

the higher the fire gets. And then we have canopy fires.

Bringing those marsupials back could play a critical role

in the reduction of fire fuel load.

But bringing them back also has its challenges

because they've gone for a reason

and that's because of the introduced feral fox and the feral cat.

Tim has made it his life's work to re-establish populations

of Australia's rare and threatened mammals.

At a secure facility, atop the Barrington Range,

an ark of Australian animals is being bred

as insurance populations.

After the fires, the work here is more urgent than ever before.

Around about there for now.

Hey, fat lady.

Amongst the animals being bred for release are Tasmanian devils,

the largest surviving marsupial carnivore.

There you go.

Let's have a look.

That's it, big girl.

Good girl. You got some?Look at that.

A peek inside the pouch

shows tiny joeys developing.

..one, three.

A little girl.Oh, look at 'em.And a little boy.

And...last one...

is another little boy. Two boys and a girl.

Good effort, Mum.

That's awesome.

What we'll do is we'll tuck her joeys back in

and then we'll pop her back in her nest box.

(GRUNTS)I know, I know.

Righto.

The Ark has bred over 450 devils,

with 50 set free in Tasmania.

Hundreds of other animals have been raised for release in national parks.

But restocking wild populations

depends on creatures having wild places to live.

(SQUEAKING AND SNARLING)

Australia has been facing the loss of its natural places

and natural things for a very long time.

The fires should act as a big wake-up call,

and not just for eastern Australia.

The catastrophic loss of biodiversity throughout Australia

is very well documented.

If fires have brought that to light, let that be the good.

(CHIRRUPING AND SQUAWKING)

In the forests of Queensland's Darling Downs,

life awakens.

(CHIRRUPING AND SQUAWKING)

Epicormic shoots are sprouting from tree trunks.

Like lime-green feather boas,

they adorn the blackened bodies of the gums.

(SQUAWKS)

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

Storms bring the hope of landscape recovery.

Quenching rains soften the baked soil...

..and add the lifegiving ingredient to buried seeds.

(BIRDS CHIRRUP)

It's been almost eight months since the Gospers Mountain blaze

turned the famous Blue Mountains black.

80% of this World Heritage area

was razed by the fires.

Today is the first time ornithologists Anastasia and Vicky

have returned to their study site in the Jamison Valley.

We're hoping that the birds have survived

and we're hoping to hear a dawn chorus cos it's the middle of winter,

it's their breeding season and they should be starting to sing now.

(BIRDSONG AND CHIRRUPING)

I think he's over there. You see him?Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do.

(BIRD CALL)

(SQUAWKING) It's amazing that they're here.

(SQUAWKING)

Finding survivors is encouraging...

Oh, it's good to see him.

..but seeing the males perform courtship displays

is the best sign of recovery.

Yeah, so the male superb lyrebird,

he's most famous for his vocal mimicry.

(HIGH-PITCHED CALL)

(SQUAWKS AND CHIRRUPS)

They can mimic a huge range of sounds in the environment...

(HIGH-PITCHED CALL)

..mainly other species of bird.

(HIGH-PITCHED CALL)

They can mimic a camera shutter, chainsaws,

all sorts of bizarre things.

(SQUAWKS)

(CHIRRUPS)

Last year, we had this great team of excellent biologists

finding lyrebirds throughout the entire range

of New South Wales, Victoria, ACT, Southern Queensland.

And then at least half of those sites have now gone

We've looked at the maps, um...

It's incredible. It's...

It's really, really upsetting.

So, we feel that some of the birds that we've recorded

will have perished in the fires.

And perhaps some of the dialects,

some of these different animal cultures,

may have become extinct just in, you know,

a few months during these fires.

To see these places, one after each other,

be destroyed, it's devastating.

What has been lost? What is left now?

Uh, have we lost whole animal cultures?

(CHIRPING)

We heard more singing this morning than I thought we would,

given what I saw on the fire maps of how badly this area's been affected.

And so the fact that these males have survived,

it's a good sign that these females have survived as well.

Each breeding season, Vicky checks the nests

of the females in her study sites.

So, along here we have Gertrude.

Her neighbour is Xena. And then the final bird on the end

that we were working with was Queen Victoria.

And we were just in the territory of Diana.

Lyrebirds have shown resilience in the moment of fire.

So, we know that they will go down wombat holes.

We know that they will hide in creek lines.

They're not very good flyers, so when faced with fire, it's not like they can fly away.

They've kind of just got to hunker down.

Foremost on Vicky's mind is her favourite bird Gertrude.

She has checked her nest for the last four years.

(So, that's her nest over there.)

And I can't see her,

but there's a feather in the nest.

And so, to me that says it's an active nest.

And so, that's a really, really good sign.

But I'm going to have to get closer...

..to see if she's in it.

Hi! Long time no see, sweetheart.

Hello.

And so she's trying to distract me from her location.

So, I'm just going to check if there's an egg in here.

Very gently.

And yep, we have an egg.

So, this cargo is very, very precious,

remembering that they only have one per year.

Pop it back to safety.

I'm just so pleased. (LAUGHS)

I assumed that all these birds were gone.

And I grieved for them because I didn't think they would survive.

Today has been wonderful to give me a bit of hope.

She's looking at me.

Like small mammals who reduce fuel loads by tilling the soil,

lyrebirds also play a vital role as landscape engineers.

Each bird moves 150 tonnes of soil every year,

more than any other animal on earth.

Lyrebirds actually help decrease the chance of really intense fires

because they're helping with the decomposition of leaves

and preventing that kind of build-up

that can lead to really intense fire.

(CHIRRUPING)

The forest relies on lyrebirds,

just as they rely on the forest.

(CHIRRUPING AND SQUAWKING)

It's estimated three billion native vertebrates

perished in Australia's Black Summer fires.

The equivalent of almost half the human population of the planet.

No other event anywhere in the world in living memory

has killed or displaced as many animals.

It's an unfathomable loss of rare and precious wildlife.

Australia's Black Summer fires

rank as the worst wildlife disaster in modern history.

But Australia is just the leading edge of a new global reality.

(SIREN WAILS AND HORN BLARES)

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

Humans are pushing the planet to a new epoch of fire.

It's been dubbed the Pyrocene.

(ROARING)

Climate modelling predicts longer,

more dangerous fire seasons

for both the southern and northern hemispheres.

As global temperatures reach cataclysmic new highs,

a hotter, more fiery planet

means intervention will be increasingly necessary

for animals to survive in a world where the rules have changed.

In the ashes of Namadgi National Park,

in the Australian Capital Territory,

Professor David Lindenmayer

surveys the obliterated landscape.

As a world-renowned fire ecologist,

David has been researching how the fire seasons are changing.

What we're seeing is unprecedented fire.

Places that are burning that should never burn,

such as sub-tropical rainforest,

and places that are burning repeatedly.

No ecosystems are geared to deal with very frequent,

very high-intensity and high-severity fires.

And the danger is that that will

lead to the collapse of some ecosystems

and the extinction of some of the species associated with those environments.

We simply have to tackle issues with climate change.

Climate and weather are the fundamental drivers of fire.

We have to take part in this global discussion

about what we are going to do to control carbon emissions,

what we are going to do to store more carbon in the environment,

and what we are going to do to deal with

the kinds of catastrophic events that we've seen.

Climate change is not something far off in la-la land.

It's here and now.

It's a clear and present danger.

Flame robin, right here. See the male?(CHIRRUPING)

There he is. It's one of the first birds that we start to pick up

in the environment when it's been burnt like this.

He's cross with me because I'm wearing red.

There would have been enormous mortality of animals in this area.

Many populations would have been knocked back -

90...95%, maybe even more.

But those residual animals that have survived

and can make a living directly after the fire,

will be important for recovering populations in these kinds of areas.

The key thing is that these areas

don't burn again in the next few years.

What we experienced in 2019-20 was a catastrophe in Australia.

But the reality is that many, many other parts of the world

are going to experience these kinds of problems.

We have to work harder to come up with good solutions

in a proactive way.

It's the only way forward.

The platypus rescued early in the summer

is now ready to head home.

Today is such a big day for Buddy.

He has been putting weight and condition on

for the last six months.

And he is very excited, by the looks of it, to go out into the wild.

A wet winter has brought rivers back to life.

I'll miss him a lot... (LAUGHS)

You're ready to go.

..but it's really, really exciting to be able to let him go.

Feels amazing. I got a little bit teary there.

He's actually just checking out where he might make his new home.

There's lots of food around. Hopefully he'll find a female

and start to repopulate this area.

So, fingers crossed, we have little Buddies swimming around soon.

(BIRDSONG AND CHIRRUPING)

Almost one year after the fires,

the Blue Mountains are greening again.

With high hopes, Vicky returns to Gertrude's nest site.

And so we've come back today to see if that egg

has turned into a chick, hopefully.

Vicky finds the nest... and Gertrude, too.

So, this is a really good sign.

They put their wing up. It's a defensive behaviour.

I would expect her to only be doing that

if either she still had an egg or there was a chick in the nest now.

The stakes are high. Last year we had a predation rate of about 90%,

so most nests didn't survive.

And so it's always a bit nerve-wracking

when you go back to see if there is a chick because there may have been

or you may have missed it and not been there in time.

(HIGH-PITCHED CALL) Hopefully there's one in there.

Yes, there is a chick.

(HIGH-PITCHED SCREECH)

(SQUAWKS FRANTICALLY)

There we are.

Look. Hello.

(CHITTERING)

You notice it's listening to Mum.

(CHITTERING) (CHIRPS SOFTLY)

Considering what happened with the fires,

I'm just so stoked to see this little one. (LAUGHS)

Beautiful.(SQUAWKS SOFTLY)

I'm always happy to see a lyrebird baby,

but this baby is very special.

There we go. I didn't even think Gertrude would have survived

and the fact that she's not only survived

but has a beautiful, healthy chick - I'm just over the moon.

For Australia's precious wildlife to recover,

it will take many years and much human help.

(CHATTERS)

(BIRDS CHIRRUP AND CHATTER)

Communities working to regenerate landscapes

and create safe, feral-proof havens for wildlife

will be essential.

As will be the necessity to preserve

fragile habitats and threatened species.

And captive breeding to restock wild populations

will also reduce the risk of extinction

in case of future fires.

I think there's a whole range of things that need to be addressed.

Where are our small mammals?

Who's looking after the forest in a natural way?

Are we correctly managing fire within our parks?

Then we've got the super-beast of climate change.

Which areas can we tackle

and which have the real tangible impact before it's too late?

The fires have brought a real awareness to Australia,

and the rest of the world, of how fragile we really are.

It's only through work like this and everybody doing something,

moving it forward, that we will see the change, we will see healing.

(BIRDS CHIRRUPING)

(BIRDSONG)

(CHIRRUPING AND SQUAWKING)

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