ABC News, 4 December 2020:
Mark Graham takes hope from pockets of Gondwana rainforests regenerating after the bushfires.(Supplied: Drew Hopper)
Ecologist Mark Graham has studied Australia's Gondwana rainforests for decades and, after years of drought and bushfires, says things have never looked so dire.
"To bear witness to the loss of some of these ecosystems . . . it's a very upsetting thing to observe," he said.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature [IUCN] this week rated Gondwana rainforests a "significant concern". In 2017 the same report rated the forests as "good, with some concern".
The IUCN is the official advisor on nature to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.
The report also found climate change was a threat to 69 per cent of Australia's 16 World Heritage sites, including the Great Barrier Reef, more than double the global trend of 33 per cent.
Nightcap National Park, in northern NSW, is one of the Gondwana rainforests devastated by fire a year ago.(Supplied: Darcy Grant)
Burnt rainforests 'still suffering'
The Gondwana subtropical rainforests stretch from the Hunter region in NSW to south-east Queensland and were entered on the World Heritage List in 1986, with extensions in 1994.
The 41 national parks and reserves ranging from 10 hectares to 102,712 hectares contain more than 200 rare or threatened plant species and have been compared with the Galapagos Islands in terms of global importance.
Mark Graham said more than a year after major bushfires, some parts of the rainforests were still suffering.
"There are definitely [some of] these really ancient forests that have burnt, and a year or more on there's very little, if any, life in them," he said.
"Thankfully, in some of our fire grounds, there is recovery occurring."
'Other threats increasing'
Mr Graham said the real concern now was more fires that might further reduce the size of the rainforests.
The IUCN report points out that while management has so far been effective in addressing challenges, further management responses will be required to address increasing threats, particularly those posed by bushfires as well as invasive species, pathogens, and climate change.
"There is wide recognition that considerable conservation actions will be required," the report says
"However, there is the lingering prospect that the catastrophe is a clear sign of the impact of climate change on weather patterns, and that these changes will not be reversed easily."…….
The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 December 2020:
The 3 billion animals estimated to have been killed, injured or seen their habitat destroyed by the summer fires is now understood to have included 143 million mammals, 181 million birds, 51 million frogs and 2.46 billion reptiles.
The toll includes an estimated 40 million possums and gliders caught in the path of fires; more than 36 million antechinuses, dunnarts, and other insectivorous marsupials; 5.5 million bettongs, bandicoots, quokkas, and potoroos; 5 million kangaroos and wallabies; 1.1 million wombats and 114,000 echidnas.
It is believed 60,000 koalas were killed, injured or lost habitat, with the worst losses on Kangaroo Island where 40,000 were killed or harmed in some way.
About 11,000 koalas were hit in Victoria and 8000 in NSW according to a new report into the impact of the fires on native wildlife, which confirms an earlier overall estimate but provides far more detail about the losses.
Professor Chris Dickman of the University of Sydney, who oversaw the research on behalf of the Worldwide Fund for Nature Australia, said the impact on reptiles was so high because they live in such great densities in some of the worst affected areas, with small lizards such as skinks reaching densities of 1800 per hectare.
Researchers mapped the path of the 15,000 fires over 11.46 million hectares of the total 19 million hectares that burnt over the summer, and married it with existing data about animal densities in the areas hit.
They did not directly estimate numbers of animals killed because research about how different animals may survive fires is limited, and the factors that contribute to impact are varied. For example some species can flee faster and others are more resilient at surviving later in a burnt landscape.....
