An extreme heatwave in Australia has led to the deaths of more than 90 wild horses in the outback, authorities say. Rangers found dead and dying animals in a dried-up waterhole near Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, last week.
About 40 of the animals had already died from dehydration and starvation. Surviving horses were later culled. It comes amid record-breaking heat, with temperatures hitting 49.5C north of Adelaide in South Australia. The mercury rose to 47.7C in the city itself on Thursday, breaking a record set in 1939. Australia has experienced a fortnight of extreme heat that has broken dozens of records across the nation.
Emergency services in more than 13 districts are on alert for fear of possible bushfires. Meanwhile in Alice Springs, near where the horses were found, temperatures have exceeded 42C for almost two weeks – more than 6C above January’s typical average, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. Rangers came across the horses after their absence was noted by a remote community, said local authority Central Land Council (CLC).
A local resident, Ralph Turner, also visited the site and posted photos online, describing the scene as “carnage”. “I was devastated. I’d never seen anything like it – all the bodies,” he told the BBC. “I couldn’t believe something like that had happened.”
Another local, Rohan Smyth, told the ABC that water was “normally there” and that the horses “just had nowhere to go”. The council said it had organised a cull of the remaining horses because they were found close to death. They also planned to cull another 120 feral horses, donkeys and camels “dying from thirst” in a neighbouring community, said CLC director David Ross. “With climate change well and truly upon us, we expect these emergencies to occur with increasing frequency and nobody is truly prepared and resourced to respond to them,” Mr Ross wrote in a press release. Several other wildlife species have also suffered, including reports of mass deaths of native bats in New South Wales. Up to a million fish have also been found dead along river banks in the drought-affected state.
