Bushfires are sweeping across Australia and destroying precious wildlife and taking homes. Massive drought conditions and extreme high temperatures have fuelled a series of massive bushfires across Australia last year and still continuing in 2020.  This climate change is increasing the extreme risk of Bushfires in Australia.  NSW and Victoria are the worst affected states. In NSW, fire has affected more that 5 million hectares and destroyed more that 2000 houses forcing thousands to people to seek shelter.

Bushfires had a major impact on wildlife as well especially Koalas. As they are slow moving creatures, making it more difficult for them to escape the fires. Also, their primary source of food is eucalyptus, a plant whose leaves are highly flammable due to the presence of oil. It has been estimated that 8000 have been killed in bushfires in norther NSW and as many as 30000 in Kangaroo Island.

With this current bushfire and drought situation in Australia, I felt the urge to do some analysis in Tableau on the historic data of bushfire danger index and how bushfires are impacting Koalas habitat.  Below is a quick video of the dashboard showing the bushfire danger index changing over years.