'Silent death': Australia's bushfires push countless species to extinction

Millions of animals have been killed in the bushfires, but the impact on flora and fauna is more grim even than individual deaths

Close to the Western River on Kangaroo Island, ecologist Pat Hodgens had set up cameras to snap the island's rare dunnart - a tiny mouse-like marsupial that exists nowhere else on the planet.

Now, after two fires ripped through the site a few days ago, those cameras - and likely many of the Kangaroo Island dunnarts - are just charred hulks.