In Australia, It's Not Just Countless Animals Killed By Fire, It's The Erasure Of Their Habitats
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Bushfires don’t just burn animals to death but create starvation events. Birds lose their breeding trees and the fruits and invertebrates they feed on. Ground-dwelling mammals that do survive emerge to find an open landscape with nowhere to hide, which one ecologist said became a “hunting arena” for feral cats and foxes.
“It’s reasonable to infer that there will be dramatic consequences to very many species,” said Prof John Woinarski, of Charles Darwin University. “The fires are of such scale and extent that high proportions of many species, including threatened species, will have been killed off immediately.” He said footage of kangaroos and flocks of birds fleeing fires was no evidence of their survival. With fires extending so widely, they run out of places to escape. “We know that the species that can’t fly away – like koalas and greater gliders – are gone in burnt areas. Wombats may survive as they’re underground but, even if they do escape the immediate fire front, there’s essentially no food for them in a burnt landscape.”
Woinarski said the critically endangered long-footed potoroo was restricted almost entirely to East Gippsland, which has been devastated by this year’s fires. In southern Queensland, much of the known range of the silver-headed antechinus “has been obliterated by fires”, he said.
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Legge offered other examples. The endangered Hastings River mouse, she said, had had about 40% of its known distribution “toasted”. Fire has also covered about a third of the range of the vulnerable rufous scrub-bird. “Even some species that are not snuffed out completely will struggle in the coming months,” she said. “I think this is the end for a number of species.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/04/ecologists-warn-silent-death-australia-bushfires-endangered-species-extinction
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