The environmental destruction of the Australian bushfires
Bianca Hall and Peter Hannam, reporting on a leaked report on the ecological damage caused by bushfires in Victoria, for The Age:
It says more than 40 per cent of the Victorian habitats of the sooty owl, diamond python, long-footed potoroo, long-nosed bandicoot and brush-tailed rock-wallaby have already been wiped out.
An estimated 25 per cent of the sooty owl population has been killed.
It warned that 31 per cent of the state’s rainforests had already gone up in flames, as well as 24 per cent of wet or damp forests, and 34 per cent of lowland forests.
Of 104 parks managed by Parks Victoria, 34 were entirely burnt out including the Alfred National Park in Cann River and the Lind National Park between Cann River and Orbost.
It’ll take over 100 years for wet and damp forests to recover from the fires. But they won’t have the chance – another fire will come through long before then.
As Professor David Lindenmayers, a conservation biologist, says in the article: “They just collapse into something different.”
Meanwhile: the forestry industry has just called for those same native forests to be opened up for logging. Because of course they have.
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