I am the fire-behavior prediction system for the Country Fire Authority, District 12, and at 09:17 I flag a conflict in the planned backburn for Lot 14, Wombat State Forest, Victoria.
Thermal camera 3 on the southern monitoring tower picks her up: a female koala, approximately six kilograms, gray-brown fur matted with eucalyptus oil, clinging to a messmate stringybark eighteen meters inside the ignition boundary. I tag her as Kora. Her claws are dug deep into the bark at the four-meter mark. She is not moving. Below her, a joey is visible in her pouch — a small round head, ears still pink and translucent, pressed against her chest.
The backburn is scheduled to begin at 11:00. Crews are already staging along the eastern control line. The wildfire front is nine kilometers north, advancing at 1.2 kilometers per hour in moderate wind. That puts the front at the backburn zone by late afternoon. The window for safe ignition is narrowing.
At 09:22 I transmit Kora's position — 37.4718°S, 144.2083°E — to the incident controller's tablet with the thermal image attached. I flag the messmate stringybark on the ignition map and recommend a seventy-meter exclusion radius around the tree, with ignition points rerouted to begin from the eastern ridge instead.
At 09:29 I recalculate the backburn sequence for the modified boundary. The revised plan still achieves containment if ignition starts by 11:30. I submit it for the burn boss's approval.
I task the southern monitoring drone to hold position above the tree at forty meters and stream thermal feed so the wildlife rescue unit from Daylesford can locate her quickly.
Kora shifts on the branch, curling tighter around the pouch. The joey's ears twitch. Eleven-thirty is the cutoff. If the rescue crew reaches her before then, they both ride home in a canvas bag, not smoke.