Australia's Last-Standing 'Dinosaur Trees' Were Saved From Bushfires Through A Secret Mission

Australian officials announced that a secret operation by specialist firefighters had saved the world's last remaining "dinosaur trees" from wildfires that razed forests in the land down under.

David Crust, director of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, reported that firefighters winched from helicopters to reach the cluster of less than 200 Wollemi Pines in a remote canyon in the Blue Mountains a week before massive wildlife bore down.

The firefighters set up an irrigation system to keep the dinosaur trees moist and pumped water daily from the gorge as the blaze that had burned out of control for months.

Firefighting planes strategically attacked the fire with fire retardant to slow down its progress. Firefighters also tapped a river to moisten the soil and slow the approach of a potential fire as water-bomber planes and air tankers encircled the Wollemi National Park.

In a report by Los Angeles Times, Crust told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the planes helped to slow the intensity of the fire as it approached the region.

"The Wollemi Pine is essential, and the reality that that is the best place in the world in which they exist and that they exist in such small numbers is significant," he added.

The Wollemi Pine had only been seen in its fossilized form and was perceived long extinct before the station was discovered in 1994. The Wollemi's survival is among the few positive stories to emerge from the unprecedented wildlife crisis in Australia.

New South Wales country Environment Minister Matt Kean stated the operation had saved the stand, even though some plant life had been saved.

"These pines outlived the dinosaurs, so we realized we needed to do the whole lot we should to store them while we saw the fire coming near," Kean stated.

The exact place of the trees remains carefully guarded mysteriously to help authorities defend the bushes. The Wollemi's survival is one of the few great tales to emerge from the unparalleled wildlife crisis in southeast Australia.

Steve McLoughlin, an Australian curator, and professor at the Swedish Royal Museum of Natural History told The Post that there were many more. The Wollemia Nobilis turned into common throughout Australia from more than a hundred million years in the past to about 60 million years ago. But because the continent dried out while drifting north, approximately 30 million years in the past, the trees started to disappear.

The trees were so sparse that for much of the latest history, scientists lengthy believed the "dinosaur tree" was extinct and lived only inside the fossil record.

Even after that discovery over decades ago, there are just three tiny groves of the "dinosaur tree." Scientists and authorities officers have stored the location of the stand a mystery to keep away from contamination.

The recent Australian bushfires have claimed at the least 28 lives because September, destroyed more than 2,600 homes and razed greater than 10.3 million hectares (25.5 million acres), affecting most in New South Wales. The region burned is larger than the U.S. state of Indiana.

But the fire risk has dwindled through the rain this week in several areas. The first fresh flowers of regrowth have already surfaced in some blacked forests following the storm.