I'm John Bachelors with Daniel Clove, the author of the new book on Coala's highly recommend.

And we're not speaking of the tragedy in

Kowalas Daniel has taught me that Kowalas have known in the hospital system.

They're extremely vulnerable to fires because they cling to their eucalyptus

trees and that is extremely dangerous but that is nature.

Qualis have been there tens of millions of years so they're survivors.

People, a couple hundred years, We'll see. Daniel, we come to El Nino. It's upon you.

Your Metropolitan Weather Bureau waited a long time to declare it but it has now declared. What

that means is hot and dry and I've been following your weather throughout

Australia. You've had a lot of heat and a lot of dry air early. Does this look to be a dangerous

fire season or just ordinary?

The fire season, I regard all fire seasons as dangerous. You never know when one's going to hit. We had a fire two

years ago that burnt through our neighborhood and burnt right along the edge of my properties. And that was not a bad season and it was not a high risk day.

Unfortunately that was an arsonist who did a very good job of setting fire to the park below my house.

So these things can happen at any time under the

strangest conditions. However, you know, the dry conditions and the hot

summers combined with a high fuel load from previous wet years does make for

dangerous conditions in many areas and we know that with climate change the incidents and

frequency and severity of fires is increasing rapidly.

So we are now seeing far more fires than we have in the past and that just increases

everybody's risk. So yes, we are looking at a scenario of increased fire risk

for across most of the country.

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