Australian bushfires may have wiped out countless species...

A number of Australian species are feared extinct as the bushfires engulf their entire known range.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/...r-recover-from-bushfires-20200109-p53q4y.html


Some ecosystems across Australia's eastern seaboard will never recover from the damage wrought by this season's bushfires and several animal and plant species are now feared critically endangered or extinct.

Parks Victoria chief conservation scientist Mark Norman said the glossy black cockatoo was one species that could now face extinction.

When you map their distribution up the east coast, from healthy populations in southern Australia to Queensland, almost every pocket of forest that they live in has been burnt," he said.

"They might fly away but they’ve got no food to come back to, and the heat and the smoke causes the things that have happened in Mallacoota [where thousands of dead birds washed up on the beach]. So the scale of it is really really disturbing and dramatic."

According to the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, glossy black cockatoos now have a "patchy" distribution in Australia, having once been widespread in the south-east of the country.

Before the fires, they could be found in areas from Mallacoota to the coast near Eungella in eastern Queensland. There was an "isolated population" in Kangaroo Island.

Conservationists are in a race against time to get into fire-ravaged areas, try to assess what has been lost, and to salvage what they can.

But their task has been complicated by the risk of new fires engulfing areas that previously escaped blazes, or fires reigniting in already-burnt pockets of forest.

"Our biggest concern is the tree-fall risk, and the risk of getting trapped by the existing fires is so high we have to make sure it’s safe for the people that get in there to get in as quick as they can," Mr Norman told ABC radio.

The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning will on Friday host an emergency summit of environmental scientists, biologists and conservation managers from across the country, to establish seed banks for rare plants, breeding programs and canvass how best to protect animals and plants that have survived fires.

“For some of these species the numbers are really low, or the plant or animal is only in a really small area," Mr Norman said.

"So there’s freshwater fishes, there's birds, there’s rare plants, that the entire world’s population exists in that landscape [and] some of them are within the full footprint of the fire. That’s the only known place that that particular plant grows or that particular animal lives."

DELWP has also established emergency wildlife and biodiversity teams, to lead people into burnt forest areas as quickly as possible.

Other organisations joining the emergency response include Zoos Victoria, which has sent frontline veterinary support to East Gippsland to help care for wildlife affected by the bushfires, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, which is helping with seed collecting.

The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald revealed on Thursday that ecologists fear "billions and billions" of animals could have been wiped out in fires in Victoria, NSW and South Australia. It is a vastly higher estimate than had previously been made.

Among those lost were pockets of endangered and critically endangered species; some of which may have been lost forever.


The last remaining habitat of the long-footed potoroo, a critically endangered miniature kangaroo, was right in the path of the blazes.

Other endangered species likely to have been affected include the spotted-tail quoll, brush-tailed rock-wallaby and corroboree frog.

"The scale of it is gigantic, and when you combine [the burnt areas of] Victoria and NSW together you’re getting close to the area of Tasmania, so that gives you a sense of scale," Mr Norman said.

“It’s totally unprecedented and, really, it's completely connected to climate change predictions and impacts and scale ... for rainforests to burn – these systems have probably never burnt or rarely burnt and been able to come back but some of these systems won’t come back.”


DELWP recommends that those wanting to support injured wildlife visit Donate to the Bushfire Emergency Wildlife Fund | Zoos Victoria Donations

 

For those who are more familiar with Australian wildlife and zoos, how likely is it that those species listed (as well as others) went extinct? What of those listed here are in zoos, and in how large of numbers?

 

It is too early to know.

Of the species mentioned, spot-tailed quolls, corroboree frogs and brush-tailed rock wallabies all have programs. Glossy black cockatoos are kept by some aviculturists and some are in zoos, so it should be possible to pull together a program for them. Otherwise we are talking about a raft of species that few would have heard about. There are fish found in only one stream, for instance, and the fear would be that the stream may have boiled dry.

 

What about one of the marsupial species mentioned in the article the long-footed potoroo, are these sufficiently managed ex-situ ?

 

Its not only the mammals, birds and reptilians which are in danger, also lots of invertebrates with small home-ranges are realy in danger :

Some of Australia’s Smallest Species Could Be Lost to Wildfires

 

I have been reading some conflicted messages about the fire and I was wondering whether anyone with local knowledge can enlighten me.

I have heard people blaming the fires in a too high fuel load. Fires are a natural phenomenon and controlled fires are beneficial and necessary longer term. Is it true that there has been too little controled burning which has enabled these fires to spin out of control? Or is extreme heat not only the immediate cause but also the main cause of these fires?

 

This reply will get political, so,my apologies but there is no other way to answer the question.

Fires are a natural part of the environment and there have been many catastrophic since European settlement. However they have largely been a feature of summer, running from late December through to February. Over recent decades Australia has been dryer, and the fire season has extended out. The first of the current fires started on the 5th September, which is extraordinarily early, and unknown from the previous record. However as anybody who has read anything about climate change in Australia will know, this is exactly what scientists have predicted, hotter dryer conditions and an extended fire season.

Our Prime Minister was embassessed returning from an overseas holiday during which the fires reached a crescendo. it should be noted he is to say the least not enthusiastic about further mitigation measures against climate change. On arriving back in Australia he proceeded to blame the fires on high fuel loads which he claims were caused by the lack of fuel reduction burning which he blamed on the Greens. Fuel reduction burns are however supported by all political parties across the spectrum. It is true that there has not been nearly as much fuel reduction burning occurring across Australia as desired. This is because it is getting harder to find enough time between the end of wet winter and the start of the fire season to safely burn. Fire chiefs and forest managers all agree on this.

More recently we have seen the cause of fires blamed on arsonists. Again police chiefs have been very quick to say that only a very small number of the fires were started by arsonists. Most of the fires have been caused by lightning associated with dry thunderstorms which become more prevalent with a dryer climate. However the narrative being pushed by climate change deniers is that the problem is insufficient fuel reduction burning and arson attacks. For them the fire problem can be solved by forcing through more fuel reduction burns against supposed greenie opposition and increasing jail terms for arson.

 

Thankfully drop bears are still alive and kicking.

This Scottish reporter was tricked into wearing full protective gear to hold a fearsome Aussie drop bear

 

Its worth also pointing out that fire chiefs have stated fuel reduction burns are not actually that effective. Especially when faced with the sort of conditions they are this summer.

There is a VERY deliberate campaign of misinformation and lies being spread by climate change denialists in Australia right now, fuelled by the Rupert Murdoch owned papers. To my horror its scarily gained some traction on social media so please don’t hesitate to inform yourself through proper sources and school anyone spreading this dangerous rhetoric.

 

There were maybe two people/organisations that I could find last year that would get them as part of their camera trapping surveys. But even then they weren't the main target and that was about it. As far as I know there's no management of this species ex-situ or otherwise.

(They are still popping up on camera traps in unburnt areas according to one of the guys facebook posts...)

 

There is no ex-situ conservation management for this potoroo ? This seems like a totally insane state of affairs.

 

Healesville kept and bred them over a number of years but dropped them as there was no immediate threat and there is always something else to spend your money on. Given the husbandry is well documented and animals are available there should be no problem in setting up a program if one is required.

 

Not mentioned in the article, but apparently, Kangaroo Island dunnart (Sminthopsis aitkeni) might be extinct now too, as the estimated population was 500 specimens.

 

It would appear given the bushfire sweeping through their habitat that now would be as good a time as any to start a programe. Don't you think that a programe is required ?

 

These pines seem to readily available from a number of sources in the UK. I'm sure I've seen them growing in suburban gardens.

 

I'd argue they just aren't happy outside that gorge either. Not the best choice for parks and gardens. hate the sun, hate the wet. Mine has been torturing me for over a decade.

 

I agree with some statements here and disagree on some statements here.

Let me first begin on what side I am on the climate change debacle. I personally believe that climate change is not the major cause of the fires however it does increase its intensity. I’m not against climate change but I also think that some people such as most media outlets and Greta Thunberg spout over exaggerated ******** to create fear among the community to promote action which is needed to be done. Climate change is not the cause of this Australian fires but it did ramp up the intensity a little bit, a good example of climate change affecting natural disasters would be the intense cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes and tornados all across the world in the last decade which have been a lot more destructive than usual as well as the slow increase of temperature and sea levels.

Now how did the fires start. MRJ is certainly correct that a good portion of the fires were started by lightning strikes but the reason the fires are so violent is because of extremely poor management across Australia with putting out controlled grass fires before they can spread and slowly burn habitat. Australia’s ecosystem is completely based of natural fires which clear out shrubs and bushes as well as more importantly allowing eucalyptus trees to germinate. When a eucalyptus tree isn’t hit by a fire and the seeds are still within the tree, flammable oils build up inside the tree. Because over decades and century’s humans have been putting out fires as if they were mosquitos, oils have been building up to insane levels in eucalyptus trees to the point where fire can jump from tree to tree consuming everything in it’s path.

Im not denying climate change ramps up the intensity of these fires as it sure does but it’s not the cause of it.

 

I don't think that any scientist would ever say that climate change "caused" these fires. Both arson and lightning are common causes of bushfires. Why the issue of what started these fires became important was that deniers were building a story that arson was significant this year, as if the problem could be sorted if we could do something about them. It was part of an attempt to weave a counter story to climate change. As it happened less than 5% of the fires were started by arson.

Where climate change enters the story with these fires is firstly how early they started, due to rising temperatures and increased drying of the environment, which also restricts how much fuel reduction burning can be done. At the same time we saw rainforests that have not burnt in centuries burn. Fire intensity in wet sclerophyll forests increases because damp gullies which make natural fire breaks have dried out.

You rightly refer to more intense and frequent hurricanes and similar events as evidence of climate change, just as higher temperatures and a drying environment also are.