20/01/2026
Victoria is on fire, native wildlife is being left to suffer, and the people who actually show up to help are being told to bu**er off – not by the flames, but by paperwork. 😡
Bendigo Wildlife Rescue has been advised they’re not allowed into fire-affected areas on either private property or public land to provide food and water, or to assess injured native animals.
They were told volunteers in or near those areas “may be directed to leave” and that “enforcement action may occur” if they don’t comply. The people trained to help are being treated like the problem. 💔
Because of that, the organisation has made the “heartbreaking decision to withdraw from the affected areas” and hasn’t been active there for days.
That’s not laziness or a lack of backbone – that’s a volunteer group being boxed out by the state government, and the way they describe it is grim. 🥀
“To know that animals are out there injured, burned, dehydrated, frightened, and to be unable to help goes against everything we stand for as wildlife rescuers,” they reported.
This is what bureaucracy looks like when it turns feral – red tape dressed up as “safety”, while living things are out there suffering in silence. 🐾
They have food ready to go, and can supply property owners, who can legally put it out themselves. They’ll even guide people, but the actual trained rescuers can’t be physically present.
Read that again – the people with the skills, the gear, the experience, and the protocols are being stopped, while the state basically shrugs and says “maybe the landholders can do it.” 🤦♂️
And who’s behind these directions? Those who pull the strings of DEECA (formerly known as DELWP), Forest Fire Management and the Country Fire Authority.
That’s Labor’s machine – the same system that loves control, loves compliance, and panics whenever anyone outside the approved club tries to help. 🧯
DEECA used to be DELWP, but don’t let the name change fool you – it’s still the same culture: process first, outcomes later, and if wildlife dies in the meantime, well, there might be a review and a PDF about it.
Forest Fire Management Victoria, meanwhile, is the operational arm that can move heaven and earth when it wants to.
But when volunteers want to put down water and check animals? Suddenly it’s all “advice”, “directions”, and “enforcement action”. 🤨
And then there’s the CFA – increasingly run from a boardroom appointed under Daniel Andrews, not from the shed floors where volunteers actually serve.
It's become increasingly clear that the leadership structure doesn’t represent the actual volunteer base when it matters, and that decisions are being made to manage optics and liability, not to save lives. 🚒
This isn’t just “rules are rules”. It’s heartless. It’s a government system choosing control over compassion in the middle of a disaster. 😤
People aren’t asking for chaos or a free-for-all. They’re begging for common sense – ID checks, authorised access, property-owner consent, coordinated entry, clear protocols, a pathway that doesn’t treat trained rescuers like criminals.
One member of the community summed up the mood perfectly: “Please choose humanity over control.” Another said, “There’s this thing called civil disobedience where there is a need to fight injustice.”
That’s not people being reckless – that’s people watching cruelty happen in slow motion and snapping. 💢
Bendigo Wildlife Rescue also says it has already sent emails and letters to the relevant minister, and hasn’t heard back. That silence is loud.
Jacinta Allan’s government can’t keep hiding behind “safety” while outsourcing compassion to whoever happens to own the land.
If it’s too dangerous for trained rescuers to enter, then the state should be running coordinated drops, vetted access teams, and properly authorised wildlife response – not blocking volunteers and calling it “compliance”. 🦘
And if Labor’s answer is “sorry, legislation”, then change the bloody legislation.
Bendigo Wildlife Rescue even spelled it out: “What needs to change is the CFA Act and the Emergency Management Act, these two pieces of legislation are what’s delaying help for our native wildlife.”
This is the ugly truth of modern emergency management in Victoria – it’s not built for humanity, it’s built for liability. And when the system is designed to protect the system first, animals get left to burn, starve, dehydrate, and die second. 🖤
People don’t forget this stuff. They remember who helped, who tried, and who stood in the way with a clipboard.
Bendigo Wildlife Rescue finished with the line that should embarrass the state: they’re constrained “not by lack of will, but by circumstance.”
That “circumstance” has a name – it’s Jacinta Allan’s Victorian Labor Government, a system so tangled in red tape and risk management that compassion can’t get past the gate.
And the bitter irony? This same government is being propped up by Georgie Purcell and the Animal Justice Party, while wildlife rescuers are blocked, and animals burn, starve, dehydrate and suffer. 🔥
