Hundreds of koalas are feared dead after a massive wildfire broke out in an Australian nature reserve

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• Hundreds of koalas are feared dead, after a massive wildfire broke out this week along Australia's eastern coastline in a nature reserve that is considered to be a critical koala habitat. 
• The koala, one of Australia's native animals, is currently listed as "vulnerable" by the country's Environment Ministry. 
• The Koala Hospital Port Macquarie said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that at over 350 koalas have died since Monday. 
• Ecologist Stephen Phillips told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Koalas are very slow breeders, and could take decades to recover from the incident. 
• In May, experts at the Australian Koala Foundation announced that they believe no more than 80,000 koalas are left on the continent and considered them to be "functionally extinct."
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Hundreds of koalas are feared dead after a massive wildfire broke out this week near Port Macquarie, located along the Australian coastline north of Sydney.

The blaze broke out in an area called Lake Innes Nature Reserve, a critical koala habitat, according to the Koala Hospital Port Macquarie. In a Facebook post from Wednesday local time, the Koala Hospital said that "two-thirds of the current footprint of the fire is prime koala habitat (or was)."

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