An extinction level event

Welcome rain is soothing a charred Australia, and providing an opportunity to assess the impact so far of an unprecedented bushfire season. Along with the loss of human life and property, is the destruction of wildlife and habitat.

Estimates of animal loss range from hundreds of millions to beyond a billion. While exact numbers are unknowable, the effect of the 10 million hectares of fire is unmissable and it is likely that some species have been wiped out, rendered extinct by the fire.

Staff from animal welfare charity Humane Society International visited Kangaroo Island in South Australia last week, where more than a third of the landscape is burnt. “It is extremely emotional,” their Australian head of programs, Evan Quartermain, said in a statement. “In some places you can’t walk 10 metres without coming across another carcass.”

In one area alight just a week earlier, they found only one live koala amidst thousands of dead koalas, kangaroos, wallabies and birds. “The scenes were nothing short of apocalyptic,” said chief executive Erica Martin.

On Monday, the government announced an initial $50 million fund for wildlife recovery that includes establishing a long-term strategy based on expert advice. “There is so much in the science, the environment, the ecology, the Indigenous land management and farm space that we can learn from,” said Environment Minister Sussan Ley.

In an effort to arrest losses, New South Wales has been dropping animal food over its national parks, and will continue to do so until sufficient natural food and water resources return. “The provision of supplementary food is one of the key strategies we are deploying to promote the survival and recovery of endangered species like the brush-tailed rock-wallaby,” said NSW state Environment Minister Matthew Kean.

The fires have destroyed habitat previously heavily populated by koalas, including at Port Macquarie in northern New South Wales and on Kangaroos Island, raising fears that the tourist favourite may have to be moved to the endangered species list.

Unfortunately, koalas in particular struggle to deal with extremely hot weather. “When animals were in warm conditions they chose to eat less protein,” Dr Phillipa Beale of the Australian National University told ABC Radio. “If, moving forward, temperatures increase and those animals repeatedly chose to eat less protein, that means they might do less of things like reproducing.”

“There’s no point trying to breed these animals up,” the clinical director of the Koala Hospital at Port Macquarie, Cheyne Flannagan, told ABC Radio, “if we’re going to just keep having these incredible heat events and dry conditions because the eucalypt forests will not sustain them.” Protecting, restoring and expanding previous forests is essential.

Unexpected heroes amongst the destruction have been wombats. While initial reports wrongly stated that the wombats had themselves shepherded other animals into their homes, it remains true that they have unwittingly provided underground refuge. Wombat burrows can contain up to a hundred metres of tunnels with numerous points of entry, and below the surface temperatures remain stable. A 2015 study by Australia’s CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), found wallabies, lizards, birds and even penguins in wombat burrows.

Another rare good-news story, this time a win for flora, is that a specially deployed team of air firefighters has helped save the last bastion of Wollemi pines. The trees, naturally existing in only one sandstone grove in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney, were thought to be extinct until discovered there 26 years ago. Known as “dinosaur trees,” fossils record their presence up to 200 million years ago. With just 200 left an unprecedented environmental protection mission was launched. This included planes and helicopters dropping water, as well as firefighters being placed into the path of the blaze to create an irrigation system in the gorge.

This bushfire season has presented a severe threat to Australia’s fauna and flora. However, thousands of native species were endangered long before the first flame flickered — a result of land clearing, development, and feral invasive animals such as cats and foxes.

Among those threatened include the most iconic, chosen as mascots for states and territories to help boost tourism. “Six out of eight of these faunal emblems are currently listed on the federal endangered species list,” Wilderness Society federal policy director Tim Beshara told the ABC. “That means they’re at a clear risk of going extinct.”

Beshara is most concerned about New South Wales’ platypus. “It’s a species that should be safe but the fact that it’s been declining and having a series of local extinctions I find incredibly worrying,” he said.
It will be some time before the full impact of the fires is known, especially with the season only halfway through.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Australian Conservation Foundation policy analyst James Trezise told​ the Guardian Australia​ this week. “The number of species and ecosystems that have been severely impacted across their ranges is almost certain to be much higher, especially when factoring in less well-known species of reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates.”

The conservative Liberal government is making belated indications of leaning “green” amidst this catastrophe but the commitment needs to extent beyond the immediate impact of the fires to providing sustainable and long-term preservation of the nation’s unique animals and habitat. Addressing climate change must be at the centre of this action.