Campers evacuated as fire in south-west Tasmania brings smoke to Hobart

A fire in Tasmania's south-west wilderness has burned through more than 2,500 hectares and forced the evacuation of bushwalkers in the area, as the state is warned to brace for a scorcher on Friday.

Traveller Teagan Fone-Stephenson snapped this
 photo of the Gell River fire from the helicopter.

Two separate fires, both started by lightning last Friday, joined together and are burning at Gell River, approximately 6 kilometres north-west of Lake Rhona, the Tasmania Fire Service said.

Parks and Wildlife personnel, supported by waterbombing aircraft, are working to contain the fire.

Leah Soo and two friends were camped at Lake Rhona on Friday and saw the fire on their way to a nearby peak.

Read the ABC News story by Ellen Coulter and Lucy MacDonald - “Campers evacuated as fire in south-west Tasmania brings smoke to Hobart.”

Can a last-ditch intervention save the orange-bellied parrot?

Not much larger than a common budgie, the orange-bellied parrot breeds in Tasmania's south-west wilderness over summer before flying north for the winter to fossick in the coastal saltmarshes of Victoria and South Australia. Over the past few decades, millions of dollars have been spent in an attempt to prevent these small, brightly coloured birds from becoming extinct. As well as monitoring OBPs in the wild, the Tasmanian government has bred an "insurance" population at the Hobart Wildlife Centre, some of which are released into their natural habitat annually to bolster numbers.

A male orange-bellied parrot in the wild – a sight that may soon disappear.

Nobody really knows why they're so endangered. It could be any combination of the loss of habitat due to land conversion, land clearing, invasion by weeds of their winter foraging grounds, increased predation on mainland Australia by feral animals, changing food availability, and catastrophic inbreeding due to their diminishing genetic diversity.

Read Nicole Gill’s story in the Good Weekend section in the Melbourne Age - “Can a last-ditch intervention save the orange-bellied parrot?”