John Pickrell

John Pickrell is an award-winning journalist, the author of Flying Dinosaurs and Weird Dinosaurs, and the former editor of Australian Geographic magazine. Currently the Asia-Pacific Bureau Chief for Nature, he has worked in London, Washington, DC, and Sydney for publications including New Scientist, Science, Science News and Cosmos, and his articles also appear in Nature, National Geographic, Scientific American, Focus, BBC Future, The Guardian and the ABC. John has been a finalist in the Australian Museum’s Eureka Prizes three times, won an Earth Journalism Award and has featured repeatedly in The Best Australian Science Writing anthology, which he edited in 2018. He studied biology at Imperial College in the United Kingdom and has a Master of Science in taxonomy and biodiversity from the Natural History Museum, London.

Flames of Extinction

The Race to Save Australia's Threatened Wildlife

In the early months of 2020, the world’s attention was riveted on Australia, where the nation’s iconic wildlife fought for survival in the face of unprecedented wildfires. Images of koalas drinking from firefighters’ water bottles went viral and became the global face of a catastrophe that would kill as many as three billion animals. Known as the Black Summer, the fire season was responsible for more wildlife deaths and near-extinctions than any other single event in Australian history.