Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service. I'm Ruth Alexander.

We start with a dramatic rescue.

Bushfires in Australia are raging.

The smoke has blanketed its biggest city, Sydney.

In one burning forest, a woman spotted a koala.

He was approaching a tree and he had flames on his back legs.

So, I just covered him with my t-shirt and just gave him off the tree.

And it was so hot and just run to the...

...where it was more open and the other guys gave me the room out of the water.

And that means he put out the fire on him.

He was taken to a koala hospital, given around the clock care and a name, Lewis.

But he was too far gone.

Lewis succumbed to his injuries a few days later.

News of his rescue, undead, spread.

Along with two claims about koalas, which we're going to weigh in on here today,

with the help of Natasha Dali from National Geographic.

There was one story in particular that was a Forbes story and the headline basically said,

you know, after the fires, koalas are now functionally extinct.

And then the kind of subhood in the story said that the fires have destroyed 80% of their habitat.

So, I think right away that was so extreme that it really grabbed people's attention.

So, have the wildfires really destroyed 80% of koala habitat?

And are the animals functionally extinct?

...