Black Summer Vigil

three-year anniversary memorial service for the three billion animals who died in the fires
2pm Sunday 2 April 2023 (AEST)
Camperdown Memorial Rest Park (Sydney) or Attend Online

Black Summer Vigil Live Stream:

You can also view the livestream on Facebook here or on YouTube here.
Bringing together stories from first responders across wildlife rescue, rural fire service, Aboriginal custodianship, veterinary medicine, ecology, and more.
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The Black Summer Vigil is brought to you by the Department of Animals, Animals Australia, the NSW Wildlife Council, World Animal Protection, Humane Society International and Defend the Wild, with support from WIRES, Firesticks Alliance, Nature Conservation Council of NSW, Wild2Free Kangaroo Rescue, Four Paws, Friends of the Koala and Kangaroos Alive.

FEATURING:

PERFORMANCE & CEREMONY BY JANNAWI DANCE CLAN
sharing a Dharug cultural perspective to honour the Ancestors and bring the spirit of the animals into the gathering
EULOGY BY ALEXIS WRIGHT
Eulogy for three billion animals killed on their homelands by multi-award-winning Waanyi writer and land rights activist Alexis Wright. The only person to have won both the Miles Franklin Award and the Stella Prize, and many other awards besides. Known for her works including Carpentaria, Tracker, The Swan Book, with her sixth book Praiseworthy coming out in April.

SPEAKERS:

  • Eulogy by Ms Wright delivered by her good friend, Djok voice actor, legal academic and legendary environmental leader Jacqui Katona, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work on the campaign to stop the Jabiluka uranium mine in Kakadu. Ms Katona is a founding member of the Melbourne School of Discontent, as well as the narrator of Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book audiobook among other works.
  • Greg Mullins, Former Commissioner, Fire and Rescue NSW; Climate Councillor and founder, Emergency Leaders for Climate Action. Greg warned Australia's then–Prime Minister in April 2019 that a bushfire catastrophe was coming. He pleaded for support and was ignored, then risked his life dealing with the ramifications on the ground. “You couldn’t see very far because of the orange smoke. Everything was dark. It was probably 2 o’clock in the afternoon but it was like night. Then I saw something moving on the side of the road and I walked closer. It was a mob of kangaroos. The speed of that fire with its pyroconvective storm driving it in every direction, they had nowhere to go. They came out of the forest, on fire, and dropped dead on the road. I’ve never seen that. Kangaroos know what to do in a fire. They’re fast animals. Climate change, driven by the burning of coal, oil, and gas is driving worsening bushfires across Australia, and putting our precious, irreplaceable wildlife in danger.”
  • Internationally recognised ecologist and WWF board member, Professor Christopher Dickman oversaw the work calculating the animal deaths from Black Summer. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Professor Dickman already wore the heavy task of being an ecologist during the sixth mass extinction, in the country that has the worst rate of mammalian extinction in the world. On 8 January 2020 media around the world shared his finding that Black Summer fires had killed one billion animals. Sadly, the fires continued for two more months, and his team’s final count was three billion. This does not include invertebrates: it is estimated 240 trillion beetles, moths, spiders, yabbies and other invertebrates died in the fires.
  • Legendary wildlife veterinarian Dr Howard Ralph OAM coming up from Southern Cross Wildlife Hospital in the NSW Southern Tablelands. As put by one of his clinic volunteers: "If you were an animal suffering or dying, you would want to look up and see Howard looking down at you.” A qualified human doctor and anaesthetist as well as a veterinary surgeon, Dr Ralph's reputation stands apart because where other vets would euthanise wildlife, he goes to great lengths to provide appropriate veterinary care to each individual he meets. From injured red belly black snakes, echidnas and wombats who've been hit by cars, kangaroos and ducks with gunshot wounds, to performing orthopaedic surgery on a microbat, a sparrow or an endangered giant burrowing frog, Dr Ralph is skilled in adapting equipment and techniques to save all those who live on these lands, and says, “It is frustrating that our wild native animals do not get the respect they deserve." In a weary interview given during the height of Black Summer, he said, "The constant input of pain and suffering is tiring emotionally. We deal with that because it needs to be dealt with and the good news from my point of view is that we can do something about it.” Some of his work in Black Summer was documented by The Canberra Times, ABC TV and We Animals Media.
  • Coming up from the South Coast, owner of Wild2Free Kangaroo Sanctuary Rae Harvey, as seen in The Bond and The Fire. She is in the sad position of having personally known and cared for a number of Black Summer’s victims: many of the orphaned joeys she cared for were killed in the fires. (She nearly died herself too.) For three years, she has been unable to even speak their names. Now, for the first time, she will tell the story of the joeys she lost.
  • Cultural burning practitioner and Southern NSW Regional Coordinator with Firesticks Alliance, Djiringanj-Yuin Custodian Dan Morgan. Dan practises using Aboriginal knowledge to heal Country. He has worked for 18 years with the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service and is on the board of management for the Biamanga National Park, a sacred area home to the last surviving koalas on the NSW south coast – which was partly destroyed by the fires of Black Summer.“The animals that live on our sacred sites are our Ancestors, it’s our Cultural obligation to protect them. We have evolved with our Country over thousands of years, nourishing and protecting all living species. Our Country represents our people. So when the fires came, it was devastating to see the aftermath, and the feeling of helplessness was truly traumatising for our people, due to the denial of our Cultural right to manage Country as our Ancestors did for thousands of years prior to colonisation. Australia needs to make legislative changes that allow us to heal Country and our community through the fire knowledge and to stop incinerating ecosystems with destructive ‘hazard-reduction’ burns.”
  • Sonja Elwood, wildlife rescuer and rehabilitator of 35 years, and a founding member of the NSW Wildlife Council, which includes 26 wildlife groups representing over 4,000 volunteers in NSW. During Black Summer, Sonja worked with animal rescue organisations and local carers to establish emergency triage centres for wildlife on the South Coast. "I was working alongside wildlife carers who had lost their homes and whose animals had been lost in the fires. Others had been evacuated and didn't know if they had a house to go back to anymore. They would have had every right to just collapse in despair and they didn't. They said, what can I do; how can I help; put me on the roster; when do you want me tomorrow? They showed up every day to help our burnt wildlife."
  • Head of Programs & Disaster Response at Humane Society International (HSI) Evan Quartermain, who was one of the first responders on Kangaroo Island where nearly 40% of the island burnt at high severity: “Those were some of the toughest scenes I’d ever witnessed as an animal rescuer: the bodies of charred animals as far as the eye can see. Every time we found an animal alive it felt like a miracle.” As a result of this firsthand experience, HSI commissioned a report into the state of Australia’s disaster response for wildlife, which we’ll also hear about.
  • Danielle Celermajer, Deputy Director of the Sydney Environment Institute and leader of the Multispecies Justice project. In the midst of the fires, Danielle started to write about a new crime of our age – omnicide, the killing of all. Her book Summertime  narrates her firsthand experience of what catastrophic climate change feels like and means not only for humans, but for the animals whose worlds it is ruining. She will share the story of Jimmy and Katy, left to die as piglets on a factory farm floor, who'd been living safely on the land they shared with her and the rest of the multispecies community until Black Summer. Siblings and lifelong companions, tragically Katy was killed in the fires, with Jimmy left traumatised and griefstricken.

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Stories from the guerrilla war against the sixth mass extinction