The fires have devastated more than 115,000 square kilometers of drought-stricken bush. (File)
Sydney:
Nearly three billion animals were killed or displaced by the unprecedented 2019-2020 wildfires in Australia in “one of the worst natural disasters in modern history,” according to a report released on Tuesday.
The study by scientists from several Australian universities said the affected wildlife included 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds and 51 million frogs.
Although the report does not say how many animals died from the fires, the outlook for those who escaped the flames “was probably not great” due to a lack of food, shelter and shelter. protection from predators, said Chris Dickman, one of its authors. .
The fires ravaged more than 115,000 square kilometers (44,000 square miles) of drought-stricken bush and forests across Australia in late 2019 and early 2020, killing more than 30 people and destroying thousands of homes .
It was the largest and most prolonged bushfire season in modern Australian history, with scientists attributing the severity of the crisis to the effects of climate change.
An earlier study in January estimated the fires had killed a billion animals in the hardest-hit eastern states of New South Wales and Victoria. But the investigation released on Tuesday was the first to cover areas of fire across the continent, said lead scientist Lily van Eeden of the University of Sydney.
The results of the investigation were still being processed, with a final report due at the end of next month, but the authors said the number of three billion animals affected was unlikely to change.
“The interim results are shocking,” said Dermot O’Gorman, CEO of the Australian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature, which commissioned the report.
“It’s hard to think of another event in living memory that has killed or moved so many animals,” he said.
“It ranks as one of the worst natural disasters in modern history.”
The plight of Australia’s popular koalas during the fires garnered international media attention, with thousands of arboreal marsupials reportedly perishing.
But a government report earlier this year cited 100 other endangered native plant and animal species that had lost more than half of their habitat to the fires, suggesting much greater losses.
Scientists say global warming is lengthening Australian summers and making them increasingly dangerous, with shorter winters making bushfire prevention work more difficult.
The report released on Tuesday was written by scientists from the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales, the University of Newcastle, Charles Sturt University and the conservation group BirdLife Australia.
