This article relates to the ongoing debates on Australian Rural & Regional News into Koalas and also into Bushfires, Logging, Burns & Forest Management.
The latest issue of Australian Zoologist is titled “Out of the ashes: Lessons learned from bushfires and how we can better manage our fauna”. But the editorial wrap-up suggests we’ve learnt nothing. It seems our fauna will continue to suffer from mismanagement under a Lock It Up and Let It Burn ‘conservation’ paradigm.
The abstract mentions monitoring, mapping and research, but the only reference to management is “use of supplementary resources such as nest boxes and artificial roosts to replace those lost in fires”. One of the editors of both the journal and the special fire issue is Dr. Brad Law who is a much-published expert on monitoring koalas, but not on fire management.
Surprisingly, the editors provide some information about rescue and rehabilitation of koalas in the Black Summer fires, but no data about before and after monitoring. Instead, the wrap-up states: “Certainly, an expert elicitation identified that the fires would have had marked effects on Koala populations, and ”¦ the Koala was uplisted to Endangered in February 2022”.
It is surprising because Dr. Law has published before and after data on koalas that was not mentioned, even though Appendix 1 of the wrap-up comprises his photos of changes over time since Black Summer in a koala monitoring site at Kiwarrak State Forest.
The published data from his monitoring sites on the north coast show that koalas were lost where high fire severity dominated, but were returning within a year. Where moderate severity fire dominated, koala density was reduced by about 50% in the first year. In areas dominated by low severity fire, there was no impact on koala numbers. Ten percent of the landscape was burnt by mostly high-severity fire and six percent by moderately severe fire, so there was apparently about 13% loss of koalas due to the fires.
However, data collected by Law and his colleagues before the fires show that koalas increased by about 29% from 2017 to 2019 as detection rates rose from 75% to 97%. The logical conclusion is that there was a net increase of more than 15% in koalas despite the fires. These data, allowing assessment of overall changes in koala densities as a result of the fires, are presented in three separate scientific papers. Managers and the general public would be better served by transparency.
The koala with the explosive fuel underneath, amongst the explosive understory and in the sick canopy.
Photos taken in 2019, south of Eden by Vic Jurskis.
There is no doubt that numbers are now increasing faster than ever because of increased recruitment of young in all the soft young growth from the fires. For example, koalas in the Victorian Strzelecki Ranges are still in unnaturally high densities after 20 megafires in 200 years including Black Thursday 1851, Red Tuesday 1898, Black Friday 1939 and Black Saturday 2009.
Co-editor of both the special issue and the journal, Dr. Dan Lunney, told the NSW Koala Inquiry that koalas rapidly recolonised areas at Port Stephens burnt by crown fires in 1994. Females produced young in those areas within twelve months. Lunney’s co-witness Dr Kellie Leigh said that Science for Wildlife found large, growing, high density populations after the devastating 2013 State Mine fires in the Blue Mountains. It is clear that high intensity wildfires harm all wildlife, but are no threat to persistence of koalas. They are an irruptive species which responds positively to new growth.
The Black Summer assessment by Royal Zoological Society of NSW concluded that “a critically important way to protect and manage our native fauna is through expanded and sustained research and monitoring programs, and by making the key results available to managers and policy makers via peer-reviewed publication”.
RZS summarised Out of the Ashes in a submission to the Inquiry into Australia’s Extinction Crisis. Their “findings” can be paraphrased as follows:
- We need long term monitoring.
- Rainforests burnt.
- We need more research especially of invertebrates, many of which are still undescribed.
- We urgently need to consider the interaction of fire with invasive species, habitat fragmentation and other anthropogenic disturbances such as mining, logging, droughts, floods and climate change etc.
- Refuges at landscape and smaller scales are critically important for the long term persistence of many species, and these need to be identified and protected as a priority.
RZS doesn’t say how they are to be protected and managed. The lesson which should have been learnt from Black Summer is that we need to reintroduce sustainable management by mild fire to protect animal welfare generally and conserve the truly endangered species whose habitat is choked out by the scrub growth which fuels firestorms and megafires.
Restoring a healthy, safe, resilient and biodiverse landscape with natural refuges for rainforests and fire sensitive species requires action, not research and monitoring. The good news is that it would be cheap and effective. We can eliminate unnatural irruptions and crashes of species including koalas and invertebrates and restore the natural balance in our land of droughts and flooding rains.
Vic Jurskis has written two books published by Connor Court, Firestick Ecology and The Great Koala Scam.
References
Regulated timber harvesting does not reduce koala density in north-east forests of New South Wales | Scientific Reports (nature.com)
Fire severity and its local extent are key to assessing impacts of Australian mega”fires on koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) density – Law – 2022 – Global Ecology and Biogeography – Wiley Online Library
Passive acoustics and sound recognition provide new insights on status and resilience of an iconic endangered marsupial (koala Phascolarctos cinereus) to timber harvesting
Raking over the ashes: assessing the impact of fire on native fauna in the aftermath of Australia’s 2019-2020 fires
Australian Rural & Regional News welcomes a response from any of the researchers mentioned in this article or any person with expert experience or knowledge in this field interested in contributing to the debate.
