How Is Wildlife Recovering From The 2019/20 Australian Bushfires?
Written by Wildlife & Welfare Researcher Adam Martin.
What are bushfires?
Bushfires are a type of wildfire that burn through wild vegetation like woodland, scrubland, grassland and savannah. They are a natural process and part of a cycle that’s been around for millions of years. Low intensity fires burn dead or decaying debris, helping to return nutrients to the soil. Fires also make space for new shoots to grow and more sunlight to reach the ground, as well as killing insects and diseases that harm trees. Many plant species are adapted to use fire for survival, such as the bottle brush plants in Australia which produce a hard fruit that doesn’t release its seeds until there’s a fire. Problems arise when bushfires become too intense, growing too hot for even the hardiest of plants and animals to survive. Climate change has been linked with an increase in the size and ferocity of bushfires, and has been blamed for recent devastating fires in Australia.
W&W volunteer rescuing a dog from an evacuated community during the 19/20 bushfires.
The 2019/20 Australian bushfires
Intense heat and drought dried out vegetation throughout 2019, the hottest and driest year on record in Australia. This fuelled a summer bushfire season nicknamed “Black Summer” as fires raged on an unprecedented scale from September 2019 until they were finally extinguished on March 4th 2020 after killing 34 people and destroying 3,500 homes. Around 46 million acres of land burned, over 30 million of which was primarily forest and bushland. The WWFs report entitled “Australia’s 2019-2020 Bushfires: The Wildlife Toll” estimates that an inconceivable 3 billion animals were killed or displaced, made up of 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds, and 51 million frogs. Koalas were amongst the worse affected, with more than one third of the population perishing in the fires and extensive habitat loss further hindering their recovery.
How are forests and wildlife recovering?
Despite the destruction caused by the bushfires, only 6 months on some Australian forests had shown encouraging recovery signs. Over two years on and there are clear signs that certain tree species are faring better than others in the recovery. Many eucalypt forest ecosystems are regrowing as they are more strongly adapted to withstand bushfires, producing epicormic buds that lie beneath the bark. However, subalpine forests are struggling. In Victoria, seeds of subalpine species were collected following the bushfires in an effort to re-establish forests, but this is a slow process and it is still too earlier to evaluate the long-term impacts. The Australian Government has so far invested around $200 million to support the recovery of native wildlife and their habitats following the Black Summer. This includes a bushfire recovery seed banking initiative whereby some of Australia’s rarest plants are having their seeds banked for future use.
The WWF launched “Regenerate Australia” - a 5-year project to aid the recovery of the affected wildlife and ecosystems, including the “Koala Forever” plan aiming to double eastern Australia’s koala population by 2050. Australian NGO the Environmental Defenders Office set up the “Defending the Unburnt” initiative to secure stronger legal protection for the most vulnerable ecosystems that remain, believing that current laws do not reflect the realities of the disaster. Overall, there is still a lot of ongoing research into the impact of the fires and the abundance and distribution of the surviving flora and fauna. The “Black Summer” will have many long lasting and permanent consequences.
The future
The 2019-2020 bushfires highlighted the urgent need to improve Australia’s wildlife rescue capacity. Byron Bay Wildlife Hospital have recently created Australia’s largest mobile wildlife hospital, hoping to be an invaluable facility to reduce the number of wildlife fatalities in future disasters. As the intensity and frequency of wildfires will only continue to increase as the climate warms, this won’t be the last time Australia has to endure such a relentless wildfire season. Climate change is also likely responsible for the record-breaking fire seasons also seen in the Amazon and California during 2020. Ecologists are highlighting the great threat to species that are adapted to withstand irregular bushfires, leaving forest ecosystems at risk of drastic change. Climate action is needed to stop the world burning and, since Australia’s bushfire disaster, calls have increased for the Australian Government and other governments around the world to commit to stricter climate measures.
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