A WILDLIFE expert says more than a million native animals may have perished in Victoria's fire inferno.

The massive effort to rescue animals caught in the fire has begun with triage centres set up to asses injured wildlife at Kilmore, Whittlesea and Redesdale near Bendigo.

Gayle Chappell from the Hepburn Wildlife Shelter says the extent of the devastation may never be known but the animal death toll is in the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions.

She says gliders, possums, antechinus, bandicoots, birds and much more wildlife have been killed.