In what is known as Operation Rock Wallaby, the New South Wales government is dropping 2,000 pounds of vegetables into areas impacted by brush fires to make sure the animals are still well fed.
“The provision of supplementary food is one of the key strategies we are deploying to promote the survival and recovery of endangered species like the brush-tailed rock-wallaby,” Minister of Energy and Environment Matt Kean told CNN. “Initial fire assessments indicate the habitat of several important brush-tailed rock-wallaby populations was burnt in the recent bushfires. The wallabies typically survive the fire itself, but are then left stranded with limited natural food as the fire takes out the vegetation around their rocky habitat.”
The food is mainly for the brush-tailed rock wallabies, an endangered marsupial that lives in the rocks and cliffs in Australia.
According to ecologists at the University of Sydney, about half a billion animals have been impacted and millions are believed to bed. That number does not include insects or frogs either.