澳大利亚重奖一只“英雄”狗
Superheroes come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes, as is the case here, they even have tails! On Oct. 11, 2021, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) honored Bear, an Australian Koolie, with the “Animal of the Year” Award.
The six-year-old dog managed to sniff out(嗅出) over one hundred injured koalas from the forest fires that swept across New South Wales (NSW), Australia, from June 2019 to May 2020. NSW’s fires was one of the worst forest fires in modern history. The fire killed 26 people, destroyed over 2,000 homes, and burned more than 46 million acres. The World Wildlife Fund estimates the fires forced nearly 3 billion animals to move away from the area where they live. Even worse, over 143 million mammals — including 6,382 koalas, 180 million birds, and 51 million frogs were injured or killed.
Bear’s story is all known to people. He has a special sense of smell. He has no interest in killing the animals he finds. All he wants to do was play! Naturally, he becomes a perfect conservation dog.
“We think Bear really deserved this award because he’s been such a good boy in helping us find and save a lot of koalas, especially during the fires, and he works throughout the year to help us in our job to make a better and safer place for koalas.” says Bear’s owner. James Sawyer, the UK director of IFAW, said “Bear is truly an amazing dogs, it shows us the good relationship between animals and humans.”