Bushfires drive many species close to extinction

THE Black Summer bushfires were an “ecological disaster” that has pushed Australia’s threatened species to the brink of extinction.

The royal commission into the bushfires yesterday examined the impact of the fires on Australia’s natural environment and heard that many of the most vulnerable creatures were directly in the fires’ paths.

More than 8 million hectares was burned in the past fire season and 45 per cent, or 3.7 million hectares, of that land was nature conservation reserve, the commission previously heard.

Of Australia’s 1800 threatened species, 327 were in the fires’ paths and had at least 10 per cent of their known distribution damaged. Another 65 species lost 50 per cent of theirs. The Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment explained that the states still did not have a centralised list of species.

Historically, each state has listed its own threatened species and “ecological communities” with their own data and definitions. That posed a challenge to forming a co-ordinated response to the fires, according to the department’s Emma Campbell.

The states signed a memorandum of understanding in 2015 to synchronise their lists, but when the fires swept through it still wasn’t in place.

The next generation of Australia’s koala population is being born in captivity, after last summer’s bushfire season wiped out thousands across the country.