Community Efforts to Care for Animals During Climate Disasters: Experiences and Recommendations from an Australian Bushfire Affected Region

Abstract

Formal disaster prevention, preparation, risk management, and response remain highly anthropocentric, with non-human animals afforded minimal attention, resourcing, and support. This article reports on informal community efforts to care for non-human animals during and after the 2019/2020 “Black Summer” bushfires in Australia, when over three billion animals were killed, injured, or displaced. We conducted 56 in-depth interviews with community members, government officials, and experts, and ran four full day workshops with community members to investigate: how communities sought to protect and care for domesticated, farmed, and wild animals; the factors that facilitated and impeded their efforts; and the changes they believed would lead to better outcomes for animals in disasters in the future. Key findings are that: human communities understood and treated non-human animals as part of their communities; humans went to extraordinary lengths to care for and rescue animals; these efforts were largely invisible to, and unsupported—even condemned—by formal emergency management agencies. We conclude that human-centric emergency and disaster management policies are at odds with community values and behaviors. We argue that disaster management must evolve to accommodate and support the realities of community-based rather than individual-based approaches, and must simultaneously expand to consider communities as multispecies.