A firefighter against the flames of Australia's wildfire season/BLM, Michael Doherty

During the devastating bushfire season that has ravaged Australia in recent months, fires burned about 60 percent of Kangaroo Island, located off the nation’s southern coast, an area rich in wildlife, including endangered birds, insects, and mammals. Conditions in the island’s Flinders Chase National Park were considered so dangerous that wildlife officials from Humane Society International - Australia could not enter to assess the damage and offer assistance, forcing them to stick to the park’s outskirts to look for wildlife survivors.

“We saw wallabies and kangaroos with burnt and infected feet, many needing euthanasia,” says Nicola Beynon, HSI-Australia’s head of campaigns. “The landscape is devastated as far as the eye can see.”

Australia boasts hundreds of national parks, although the name is a bit of a misnomer. The Australian government manages six so-called commonwealth parks and 58 marine parks, including Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, home to the famous rock formation Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock.

Australia’s six states—New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, West Australia, and Tasmania, in addition to territories—all manage numerous national parks as well, more than 500 in all. Together, the parks help to maintain Australia’s well-known biodiversity. Considered in the exceptional “mega-diverse” category, the country boasts an estimated 570,000 different flora and fauna species—a full five percent of all the world’s animals, according to government data.

In a largely dry land where drought and fire are not uncommon, the recent fire season was devastating and unprecedented, with record high temperatures in some areas. According to the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water, and the Environment, fires burned more than 25 million acres of forest and parkland across Australia—an area equivalent to the size of Kentucky. In NSW alone, the Rural Fire Service declared it the worst season on record in that state, with some 6.7 million acres of national parkland burned, collectively an area larger than Denali National Park.

At least 34 people died in the fires, including several firefighters, and loss of property has been massive and widespread. Many parks throughout NSW, Victoria, and elsewhere remain partially or completely closed.

Countless wildlife were impacted by the fires, including koalas/Humane Society International

The impact to animals has been similarly staggering, with more than a billion animals estimated to have died, and 80 percent of those deaths thought to have occurred in NSW alone. Animals die due to direct exposure to fires, but also because of the loss of food and shelter and increased predation.

According to a preliminary government survey, 49 nationally threatened plant and animal species have more than 80 percent of their known distribution within areas affected by the fires; 65 listed species have 50-80 percent; and 77 listed species have 30-50 percent of their distribution within areas affected by fire. Already, the government has identified 113 “high-priority” species, including cockatoos, pygmy possums, wallabies, koalas, snapping turtles, and crayfish, that have suffered extensive damage to their known ranges. (Citing pressing matters related to the recovery, several government agencies contacted for this story declined interviews and responded instead with emailed reports with data on affected animals and recovery activities.)

The Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland, founded by Terri Irwin and the late “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, reports that about 350 malnourished and orphaned grey-headed flying foxes—considered an important pollinator species—have been transported to the facility from fire-ravaged parts of NSW.

“We may need reclassification of a number of species following the catastrophic bushfires,” hospital director Dr. Rosie Booth said in an emailed statement. “The grey-headed flying foxes and koalas are in a lot more trouble now than they ever have been before, and their survival will be much more conservation dependent.”

Extensive fires burned significant sections of the Greater Blue Mountains and Gondwana Rainforests World Heritage Areas, which contain globally important eucalyptus forests and rainforest remnants. In the Australian Alps, fires have burned fragile alpine and sub-alpine areas, and many historic mountain huts, some of which date to the 19th century, have been damaged or destroyed.

An international firefighting force worked to douse the flames/BLM

Near Croajingolong National Park, along Australia’s southeastern coast in Victoria, a massive December fire drove thousands of people in the adjacent town of Mallacoota to the beach and water to seek refuge. In the aftermath, according to the Australian newspaper The Age, thousands of bird carcasses littered Mallacoota’s beaches, including yellow-tailed black cockatoos, rainbow lorikeets, and crimson rosellas. In Wollemi National Park northwest of Sydney, a mega-fire burned for nearly three months, although firefighters were able to protect the park’s most iconic feature: its “dinosaur pines,” so named because the species dates to about 100 million years ago.

In response, the Australian government has made an initial investment of $50 million to support both short- and long-term recovery, including $25 million to establish an emergency intervention fund to assist the most vulnerable animals and plants and $25 million to support wildlife rescue, zoos, and conservation groups with other recovery activities. And it has pledged ongoing support and coordination with nonprofits and state and local governments.

Beginning in December, the National Interagency Fire Center in the United States sent several waves of firefighting personnel from the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and other agencies to assist with fire suppression efforts in Australia, with a particular focus on heavily affected areas in NSW, Queensland, and Victoria. This work was facilitated by multinational agreements between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, signed in 2017, that allow for the sharing of resources to fight wildfires.

In NSW, park officials have delivered more than two tons of supplementary food to bush-tailed rock wallabies, created watering stations for koalas, and distributed food and water for mountain pygmy possums in Kosciuszko National Park. Australia Zoo established a fundraising appeal to help with bushfire-related animal rescues. And HSI has given grants for food, veterinary supplies, irrigation systems, and new animal enclosures.

“Among the beneficiaries are wombats, koalas, birds, wallabies and kangaroos and even a fruit cutting machine to feed a colony of endangered flying foxes,” HSI’s Beynon said. “A new wave [of personnel] deployed in February because the need for rescues is ongoing, and our minds are now turning to longer term recovery and how we can help with habitat restoration for the island’s many threatened species.”  

Wombats were among the many animals that were rescued from the fires/BLM, Jason Porter

As time goes on, scientists are warning that, unless the effects of climate change are mitigated, bushfires will become more destructive and the overall fire season will lengthen. Recent years have also seen state and federal efforts to cut funding from the Australian park system, including a 2017 proposal to de-gazette (remove designation) of the Murray Valley National Park to allow for more logging.

“The recovery will take years, and meanwhile our fear is that extreme fires will become more frequent,” Beynon said. “Australia was already hurtling into an extinction crisis with inadequate policy settings and laws. The bushfires have exacerbated this and expedited the extinction risk for many species. A herculean recovery effort is needed with the funds to match, along with a mustering of political will to [place] the environment front and center in the nation’s priorities.”