AUSTRALIA: Forgotten Victims of Bushfires’ Fury

• by Stephen de Tarczynski (melbourne)
• Monday, April 20, 2009
• Inter Press Service

There is a 'need to look at the impact of fires, particularly these large, intense fires, on native wildlife and ecosystems, and of course that’s in addition to the impacts on [human] life and property,' says Richard Hughes from the Wilderness Society conservation group.

Australia experienced its worst-ever bushfires on and around Feb.7. The day has been dubbed 'Black Saturday' for the death and destruction inflicted by large fires to the north and east of Melbourne which were spurred on by strong winds, extreme temperatures and dry vegetation resulting from drought.

Besides the ongoing effects on family and friends of the 173 people who were killed during the fires - this figure was revised down by police in late March from an initial estimate of more than 200 - populations of animal species, as well as the natural environment in which they live, are thought to have been heavily impacted.

Iconic symbols of Australia like koalas - a 'substantial number' of Victoria’s koalas are believed to have been affected after bushfires ripped through its main habitat in the state, according to a preliminary report on the fires’ effects on wildlife and the natural environment by the Wilderness Society - and kangaroos were caught up in the blazes.

Additionally, rare and endangered species are also believed to have been greatly impacted.

Among these are the Sooty Owl, the Ground Parrot, the Spotted Tree Frog and the Barred Galaxias, a small native fish which is threatened by ash and sediment from fires washing into the streams where they live.

While the ornithologist organisation Birds Australia says that up to two million birds have also been affected by the fires, the Wilderness Society reports that 'a significant area' of the habitat of Victoria’s highly-endangered faunal emblem, the Leadbeater’s Possum, was burnt.

Hughes holds grave fears for the species, of which less than one thousand are thought to be left in the wild.

The Leadbeater’s Possum’s 'habitat will be affected for quite a long time to come, because this species relies on big old trees for nesting hollows, and intense fire can damage those trees, causing them to collapse,' says Hughes.

'It will possibly be centuries before these sorts of features in landscape can recover,' adds the activist.

But while Hughes says that 'we can expect significant impacts' on these vulnerable species, the full scale of the fires’ effects is not yet known. The Wilderness Society campaigner told IPS that years could pass before the total impacts on the endangered species become evident.

However, conservationists remain concerned for reasons other than that the fires swept through the habitats of species known to be under threat. They also point to the lower-than-expected number of animals received by wildlife centres and animal shelters.

Franciscus Scheelings, a veterinarian from the Australian Wildlife Health Centre (AWHC) at the Healesville Sanctuary east of Melbourne - the town of Healesville itself was also threatened by the fires - says that around 170 animals were brought to the centre. Among these were kangaroos, koalas, wallabies, echidnas and lyrebirds.

In addition to the animals taken to the AWHC and brought in by the centre’s staff, hundreds more were received by various other clinics and shelters close to the affected areas. But despite around 900 animals being taken into care in total, Scheelings says that more were expected.

'When you consider the area of forest that was destroyed it’s quite a minimal number and at this stage we think it was just the sheer intensity of the fire which meant that a lot of animals perished and weren’t able to escape,' he says.

This mirrored the experience of people caught directly in the fires’ paths. In the week following 'Black Saturday', the Alfred Hospital’s Dr. Peter Cameron told local media that 'the number of serious burns requiring intensive care was about 20.'

Cameron reasoned that this somewhat low number of severe burns injuries was due to most people either being able to escape relatively unscathed or succumbing to the intensity of the fires.

Furthermore, the Wilderness Society warns that while the circumstances which combined to produce the intense and quickly spreading fires of earlier this year were extreme - the death toll easily surpassed the number of lives lost in Australia’s other major bushfire disasters, including 1983’s 'Ash Wednesday' fires in which 76 people died across Victoria and South Australia - such conditions are becoming more common.

A 2007 study by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre and the Bureau of Meteorology found that the frequency of 'fire weather' - quantified as the combination of temperature, relative humidity and wind speed with a lack of rainfall - in southeast Australia has increased over the last three decades.

With most of the very intense fire weather seasons having occurred since the late 1990s, the report warned that the trend of an increasing number of 'fire weather' days will continue.

In a response to what are increasingly being viewed as more dangerous types of fires for which fresh methods of management are required, the Victorian state government has established a Royal Commission into the causes and responses to the February bushfires. The commission is due to deliver an interim report in August and a final report in mid-2010.

The Wilderness Society backs the Royal Commission and insists that a new approach to fire management that protects not only people and property, but also the natural environment and the animals that live there, is needed.

'The size and intensity of the fires are a major concern and the consequences for these species and for the way that we manage these areas into the future really need to be carefully examined,' says Hughes.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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