Lewis The Koala Rescued in Fire Has Been Put Down
The koala that was rescued from a raging fire in Australia last week that caught the attention all over the world. The video of the dramatic rescue shows a grandma namedToni Doherty running to help the world-famous koala near Port Macquarie, New South Wales. She said there were flames on his back and his legs and she covered him with a shirt and gave him water and took him to the hospital.
They named him Lewis.
This morning, they announced that his burns were getting worse and he had to be put down.
Today we made the decision to put Ellenborough Lewis to sleep. We placed him under general anaesthesia this morning to assess his burns injuries and change the bandages. We recently posted that “burns injuries can get worse before they get better”. In Ellenborough Lewis’s case, the burns did get worse, and unfortunately would not have gotten better. The Koala Hospital’s number one goal is animal welfare, so it was on those grounds that this decision was made", according to WIVB.
Lewis was one of 14 koalas injured in Australia’s wildfires this month, treated at the Port Macquarie koala hospital. Though, koalas are already close to the endangered list and officials estimate that up to 350 perished in the major fire last week.