Australia's forest fires have a huge impact on biodiversity

's World Heritage-listed Blue Mountains region covers an area of 1.03 million hectares and is home to a number of rare and endangered species, including the "living fossil" plant Valmetsson. Alan Greenville, a lecturer in environmental science at the University of Sydney, said 80 per cent of the Blue Mountains had been destroyed by forest fires.
greenville calculates that 837,000 hectares of vegetation have been burned in the Blue Mountains since October last year. He said forest fires were raging along much of nsw's coastline, with wildlife in many places caught between flames and the sea, and it was difficult to find shelter.
, an ecologist at the University of Sydney, estimates that forest fires have killed more than 1 billion wildlife since September 2019, including mammals, reptiles and birds. Dickman used highly conservative estimates in his calculations, which did not include bats, frogs, insects and other invertebrates.
the true number of wildlife deaths, field assessments will not be carried out until the forest fires have been completely extinguished. But many experts believe that the number of wild animals killed in forest fires is well over 1 billion.
David Lindenmeier, a professor of forest ecology at the Australian National University, said the threat to wildlife was not just a sea of fire, "they have to deal with the high temperatures before the fire, the fire itself, the loss of habitat and food after the fire, and the invasion of other animals." "
fires can have a very significant impact on local biodiversity," Mr. Dickman, a local government official, told Xinhua. We estimate that 20 to 100 species have been threatened, including vertebrates and plants, and all or most of their habitats have been affected by fires. Australia
s national treasure koala is one of the worst-hit animals. Koalas are slow to move, eating only eucalyptus leaves, while oily eucalyptus trees are extremely flammable. The nsw north-central coast is the state's main habitat for koalas, with between 15,000 and 28,000. Australian Environment Minister Susan Leigh says 30 per cent of local koalas have died in ongoing forest fires. On Kangaroo Island in South Australia, forest fires have scorched more than 200,000 hectares and nearly half of the island, and about 30,000 koalas have died.
Dikman says there are often distressing reports of koalas in the media, but there are many less dramatic small animals that have died and been killed in forest fires, "and in percentage, 77 per cent of the wildlife killed in forest fires are reptiles, such as lizards, geckos and so on." Lily
, Victoria's Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, said the unprecedented scale of the fires was had a devastating impact on local wildlife and biodiversity.
a copy of the draft biodiversity response plan for the "forest fire emergency" obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald from the Victorian government shows that 70 per cent of temperan rainforests in the state have been hit by forest fires. About two-thirds of Australia's giant cave frogs, which are listed as endangered in the state, have burned their habitat, while the Australian brown short-nosed beaver, which is listed as a near-dangerous species, has lost nearly a quarter of its habitat.
government has announced it will invest A$50 million ($A4.70) to help restore Australia's flora and fauna and mitigate the damage caused by the fires. Half of the funds go to emergency intervention funds, the other half to support wildlife rescues, and field activities such as zoos and natural resource management organizations.
Leigh said helping injured wildlife recover, controlling wild predators, mapping affected areas and using unm burned areas to protect animals would be the federal government's top priority. The governments of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland have also announced emergency funding for wildlife shelters and carers to support wildlife rescue efforts affected by forest fires.
said the high temperatures and dry conditions seen
last year were likely to re-emerge and that such fires could be repeated. So how do you ensure that endangered animals survive?
're currently trying to find the answer, but most obviously, we need to find a fast and effective detection tool to find habitats that have not been burned," said Dickman. "Then we should go into these areas and give priority to areas where endangered species are known to exist, and if there are residual species, especially endangered species, we need to take further steps to ensure their survival."
he said that in the long run, the scientific community must take biodiversity seriously. Australia's biodiversity has been declining over the past few decades, with mammal extinction rates among the highest in the world. Such forest fire events are likely to accelerate the extinction of some species.