EXCERPT: Ecologists say more than half a billion creatures have been killed by bushfire pushing rare species to extinction as feral cats move in to pick off the starving survivors. [...] That number does not include insects, bats or frogs that are essential to the health of an ecosystem. [...]
Ecologists fear the bushfires may cause several species to become extinct. Professor [Sarah] Legge said many dozens of threatened species had been hit hard by the fires and that some species had seen their entire range of distribution burnt out.
[...] Australian National University Ecology Professor David Lindenmayer said ... 'The big issue is that after the fire a lot of animals have lost their habitats and have nowhere to feed or shelter,' he said. ... feral predators like cats and foxes ... 'They're attracted to burnt areas as they can forage and find food easily since the vegetation cover has been removed,' he said. Professor Lindenmayer said it was important for management agencies to start controlling feral animal populations straight away to protect the remaining animals so they may survive.
Since the start of bushfire season, roughly 5.8 million hectares of land has been burnt so far by intense fires feeding on eucalyptus fuel dried by years of drought and whipped up by strong winds in extreme summer temperatures. (MORE)
Nothing funny about Australia's crispy critters and I wonder about their invasive species' chances. I assume feral cats & goats, rabbits, honeybees cane toads et al will also be put on the brink.
Quote:Since 1770 more than 2800 weeds, 25 mammals, 20 birds, 4 reptiles, 1 frog, 34 fish, between 100 and 400 marine species and an unknown number of invertebrates have been introduced to Australia
I know this may sound callous or farfetched but is there now an opportunity to rid the country of these pests and concentrate on restoring the land for native species?
(Jan 5, 2020 05:20 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Nothing funny about Australia's crispy critters and I wonder about their invasive species' chances. I assume feral cats & goats, rabbits, honeybees cane toads et al will also be put on the brink. [...] I know this may sound callous or farfetched but is there now an opportunity to rid the country of these pests and concentrate on restoring the land for native species?
Apart from domesticated livestock dropping like flies, difficult to say if it's delivering a meaningful purge to them. Especially in any cases where an intruder's success exploded from small numbers to begin with.
Some native animals are adapted to the traditional, regular frequency of bushfires and could deal with them better than newcomers (even when it was no more than instinctively knowing when to migrate). But in the vast range and changes of this chaos, it sounds like some exotic creatures might have an edge in either survival or resilience/rebound.
Foreign plant species that grow fast and endure seasonal drought well, like buffelgrass and gamba grass may be providing extra fuel for fires which otherwise wouldn't be there.
In the switcheroo of Australian species invading other countries, eucalyptus (globulis) has spread quickly in California since railroad interests introduced the trees in the mid 19th-century. There's concern by fire departments that it could increase the menace and spread of wildfires in that state. Reduces habitat for indigenous flora and fauna, too, supposedly.
Those who study Australia’s past, have they found any evidence as to the continent ever having suffered the same fiery holocaust? I wonder how much of a part fire plays, especially a continental sized one, in the annals of its extinctions history. Seems like it may play a pivotal role there, if not globally. Not like Australia hasn’t had animals go extinct before.
C CJan 6, 2020 07:12 PM (This post was last modified: Jan 6, 2020 07:19 PM by C C.)
(Jan 6, 2020 03:40 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Those who study Australia’s past, have they found any evidence as to the continent ever having suffered the same fiery holocaust? I wonder how much of a part fire plays, especially a continental sized one, in the annals of its extinctions history. Seems like it may play a pivotal role there, if not globally. Not like Australia hasn’t had animals go extinct before.
Fire-stick farming by Australian Aborigines may have played a role in extinctions prior to the European contributions in that area. But it's undecided territory where the conclusions may never be reliable. Old school may have biases that could go too far in one way of data assumptions versus a tendency to potentially over protect non-Western cultural practices in interpretations outputted by the new ripple.
EXCERPT: A 2011 research paper has questioned whether Indigenous Australians carried out widespread burning of the Australian landscape. A study of charcoal records from more than 220 sites in Australasia dating back 70,000 years has found that the arrival of the first inhabitants about 50,000 years ago did not result in significantly greater fire activity across the continent - although this date is in question, with sources pointing to much earlier migrations at perhaps 100,000 and 120,000 years ago. The arrival of European colonists after 1788, however, resulted in a substantial increase in fire activity. The study shows higher bushfire activity from about 70,000 to 28,000 years ago. It decreased until about 18,000 years ago, around the time of the last glacial maximum, and then increased again, a pattern consistent with shifts between warm and cool climatic conditions. This suggests that fire in Australasia predominantly reflects climate, with colder periods characterized by less and warmer intervals by more biomass burning.
Some researchers, like David Horton from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, suggest, "Aboriginal use of fire had little impact on the environment and ... the patterns of distribution of plants and animals which obtained 200 years ago would have been essentially the same whether or not Aborigines had previously been living here."
This regular firing favoured not only fire-tolerant or fire-resistant plants, but also encouraged those animals which were favoured by more open country. On this basis, it is clear that Aboriginal burning, in many areas at least, did affect the "natural" ecosystem, producing a range of vegetation associations which would maximise productivity in terms of the food requirements of the Aborigines. Jones goes so far as to say that "through firing over thousands of years, Aboriginal man has managed to extend his natural habitat zone".
Aboriginal burning has been blamed for a variety of environmental changes, not the least of which is the extinction of the Australian megafauna, a diverse range of large animals which populated Pleistocene Australia. A. P. Kenshaw among others, has argued that Aboriginal burning may well have modified the vegetation to the extent that the food resources of the megafauna were diminished, and as a consequence the largely herbivorous megafauna became extinct. Indeed, Kershaw is one of a small but growing group of palynologists who suggest that the arrival of Aborigines may have occurred more than 100,000 years ago, fire-stick in hand, eager to burn the virgin landscape. He suggests that their burning caused the sequences of vegetation changes which he detects through the late Pleistocene. The first to propose such an early arrival for Aborigines was Gurdip Singh from the Australian National University, who found evidence in his pollen cores from Lake George indicating that Aborigines began burning in the lake catchment around 120,000 years ago.
Tim Flannery believes that the megafauna were hunted to extinction by Aborigines soon after they arrived. He argues that with the rapid extinction of the megafauna, virtually all of which were herbivorous, a great deal of vegetation was left uneaten, increasing the standing crop of fuel. As a consequence, fires became larger and hotter than before, causing the reduction of fire-sensitive plants to the advantage of those which were fire-resistant or indeed fire-dependent. Flannery suggests that Aborigines then began to burn more frequently in order to maintain a high species diversity and to reduce the effect of high intensity fires on medium-sized animals and perhaps some plants. He argues that twentieth century Australian mammal extinctions are largely the result of the cessation of Aboriginal "firestick farming".
Most of these theories implicates Aboriginal use of fire as a component of the changes to both plant and animal communities within Australia during the last 50,000 years. Clearly, Aboriginal people had some effect, but the significance of that effect is far from clear. It seems likely that the introduction of the intensive use of fire as a tool did indeed follow, but was not directly a consequence of, the extinction of the megafauna. If, as has been suggested, the megafauna remained in some areas until the Holocene, then we should be looking for evidence within the last 10,000 years for changes induced by new Aboriginal burning patterns.
Quote:He argues that with the rapid extinction of the megafauna, virtually all of which were herbivorous, a great deal of vegetation was left uneaten, increasing the standing crop of fuel.
I like Flannery's theory. I wonder if humans have replaced the standard crop of fuel? Our basic infrastructure, could it be a contributor to a spreading blaze, taking the place of dead vegetation and possibly be even more flammable and maybe harder to extinguish?
Quote:He argues that with the rapid extinction of the megafauna, virtually all of which were herbivorous, a great deal of vegetation was left uneaten, increasing the standing crop of fuel.
I like Flannery's theory. I wonder if humans have replaced the standard crop of fuel? Our basic infrastructure, could it be a contributor to a spreading blaze, taking the place of dead vegetation and possibly be even more flammable and maybe harder to extinguish?
The way a landscape is managed as well as negligence in that regard can certainly contribute to the intensity and spread of bushfires. Especially if allowing flammable plant growth and debris to accumulate over time in an area without allowing either natural or human efforts to clear it.
And when available, equipment and artificial materials will provide additional fuel, as well as the stubborn foreign grasses/weeds that people brought to the continent. But still the overwhelming bulk of flammable mass and its susceptibility stems from Australia's own native contents, climate, and contingent weather conditions -- which are prone and were developing toward natural cycles of burning prior to human inhabitants.
CC....gets me wondering if even newer species of plants and animals might establish in the burned area. So I checked on Krakatoa's bio-recovery.... there' mention of it in this interesting article
More than 180 alleged arsonists have been arrested since the start of the bushfire season, with 29 blazes deliberately lit in the Shoalhaven region of southeast NSW in just three months.
...
NSW police data shows that since November 8, 24 people have been arrested for deliberately starting bushfires, while 183 people have been charged or cautioned for bushfire-related offences.
Jan 5, 2020 07:31 AM
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