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New research details Black Summer wildlife toll in the billions
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.
Nearly 3 billion animals were killed or displaced in the 2019-20 fires. Credit:
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.
Professor Dickman said this resilience may cause some "generalist" introduced species – such as black and brown rats – to thrive in the aftermath and further displace native animals.
But he said there was evidence that some efforts to assist particular populations of specific animals with food drops in the wake of the fires may have helped.
One of the recommendations of the report is that more research is conducted so that similar efforts in future can be better targeted.
WWF-Australia chief executive Dermot O'Gorman said the group had established the Koalas Forever program to help double the numbers of the animals by 2050.
"Nearly 3 billion animals impacted is a number that's off the charts and shows why a plan of this scale is needed.
As part of the program the group will test a trial of seed dispersing drones to create koala corridors and the establishment of a fund to encourage landowners to create koala safe havens.