© DEPT OF ENVIRONMENT AND HERITAGE
GREAT OUTDOORS • The Australian Platypus
The beloved, yet forgotten, wildlife victim of our bushfires WORDS CATHARINE RETTER
© FAYE BEDFORD
T
46 COAST
here’s been a stoically silent victim of the devasting bushfires and drought in eastern Australia. It’s cute and (looks) cuddly, but its shy and elusive nature means it doesn’t get the worldwide publicity that our beloved koalas do. It’s the iconic Australian platypus, that uniquely different egg-laying, webfooted, fur-covered, duck-billed monotreme that is found nowhere else in the world but here. We may think river-dwelling creatures are the lucky ones during a bushfire but when the fires swept through our national parks and forests and pasturelands, the platypus’s habitat was already severely affected by the drought’s falling river levels — exacerbated by its human neighbours who had been driven to pumping water from rivers and creeks, legally and illegally.
