The Australian Bushfires

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Lisbeth
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Re: The Australian Bushfires

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It's too late to do anything when it comes to natural disasters, I am afraid. They are all over, in one way or another.


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Re: The Australian Bushfires

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Secret mission saves Australia’s ‘dinosaur trees’ from bushfires
A secret operation by specialist firefighters has saved the world’s last stand of Wollemi Pines, a pre-historic species known as “dinosaur trees”, from Australia’s unprecedented bushfires, officials said.



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A firefighter rappels into a gorge as a crew tries to save pre-historic Wollemi Pines in the Blue Mountains | © AFP | HO


Sydney (AFP) |

Fewer than 200 of the trees exist in the wild, hidden in a gorge in the World Heritage Blue Mountains, northwest of Sydney, an area hit by one of the biggest bushfires that have ravaged much of Australia for months.


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While some of the trees were charred by the flames, the grove was saved from the fires | © AFP | HO

With flames approaching the area late last year, air tankers dropped fire retardant in a protective ring around the trees while specialist firefighters were winched into the gorge to set up an irrigation system to provide moisture for the grove, officials said.

Matt Kean, environment minister for New South Wales state where the Blue Mountains lie, described the operation as “an unprecedented environmental protection mission”.

While some of the trees were charred by the flames, the grove was saved from the fires, he said in a statement late Wednesday.
The pines, which fossil records indicate are more than 200 million years old -- pre-dating many dinosaurs -- were believed extinct until the Wollemi grove was discovered in 1994
The pines, which fossil records indicate are more than 200 million years old — pre-dating many dinosaurs — were believed extinct until the Wollemi grove was discovered in 1994 | © AFP | HO

“The fire did go through there, we had a few days of thick smoke so we couldn’t tell if they’d been damaged. We all waited with bated breath,” he told ABC radio.

“It’s just been a phenomenal success story,” he added.

He said this wildfire season was the first opportunity to monitor the response of the trees to fire in a natural setting, helping the park to refine how it manages the grove.

The Wollemi Pine which grows up to 40-metres (130-feet) high is believed to have existed since the Jurassic period 200 million years ago, pre-dating many dinosaurs.

They were believed to be extinct, only ever seen in fossils, until their accidental discovery by a park ranger in 1994.




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Specialist firefighters were winched into the gorge to set up an irrigation system to provide moisture for the grove | © AFP | HO

The grove’s remote location has remained a closely-guarded secret to protect the trees from contamination by visitors.

“Illegal visitation remains a significant threat to the Wollemi Pines survival in the wild due to the risk of trampling regenerating plants and introducing diseases which could devastate the remaining populations and their recovery,” Kean said.

The trees have been propagated and distributed to botanic gardens around the world to preserve the species, but the Wollemi gorge is the only wild stand.

About one billion animals may have died in fires which have driven many species closer to extinction, according to environmental groups.

The country was enjoying a long-awaited respite on Thursday as rainstorms blanketed much of Australia’s east, although a return to warm and dry weather was forecast for later in the southern summer.

© 2020 AFP

https://lowvelder.co.za/afp/904231/secr ... bushfires/


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Re: The Australian Bushfires

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The trees are rather protected down there, between the sides of the gorge and not much wind in a place like that \O


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Re: The Australian Bushfires

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Just saw this: ^Q^ ^Q^

The Rain Finally Pours Down In Australia Putting Out Over 30 Deadly Bushfires

16/01/2020

Neringa Utaraitė
BoredPanda staff

Finally, the moment that the whole world was waiting for came around – Australia received heavy rain, severe thunderstorms and flash floods. The downpours have already helped to extinguish 32 bushfires in New South Wales alone, as the number of fires fell from 120 to 88 on Thursday. The Bureau of Meteorology are expecting 30 and 80mm worth of rain in the east of New South Wales, between Thursday and Sunday. People are speculating that it might finally bring relief to the exhausted firefighters who have battled the deadly flames for over three months now.


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Re: The Australian Bushfires

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O/\ O/\ O/\


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Re: The Australian Bushfires

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Now there are floods!! 0*\

Rush To Rescue Wildlife As Flash Flood Hits Australian Reptile Park

Natasha Christian
10 daily News Editor

Fri 17 Jan 2020 5.57 AM


Koalas have been filmed clinging for life while staff at the Australian Reptile Park rushed them to safety during a major flash-flood at the zoo.
The park's staff spent Friday morning rushing to protect both animals and buildings when torrential rain hit the location in Somersby, NSW.

The park's website advised that the tourist attraction had been closed due to flooding after much needed heavy rain.

"This has resulted in flooding and our entry points are not safe for visitors to drive through," the website read.

Staff hope the park, which is located an hour from Sydney and Newcastle, will reopen on Saturday.

It's the first time the park has closed its doors since massive floods hit in June 2007.

The park was flooded on Friday, sparking concerns about some of the more dangerous animals.

Footage released on Friday showed staff rushing to relocate animals, sandbagging doorways and sweeping away water.

Australian Reptile Park Director Tim Faulkner said the rainfall was "incredible".

"Just last week, we were having daily meetings to discuss the imminent threat of bushfires, just 8km away from the Park here in Somersby," he said.

"We’ve had the whole team out there, drenched, acting fast to secure the safety of our animals and defend the Park from the onslaught of water.

"Our quick action with the flooding this morning has allowed us to get the situation under control and we are confident that we will be business as usual tomorrow. We’ll be open and ready to welcome visitors for the rest of the summer school holidays," he said.

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Re: The Australian Bushfires

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:shock: 0:

What a classic photo!


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Re: The Australian Bushfires

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It's like in SA; or too much of one or too much of the other 0-


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Re: The Australian Bushfires

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Bushfires: can ecosystems recover from such dramatic losses of biodiversity?

January 16, 2020 1.53pm - Darren Evans, Reader in Ecology and Conservation, Newcastle University

The sheer scale and intensity of the Australian bushfire crisis have led to apocalyptic scenes making the front pages of newspapers the world over. An estimated 10 million hectares (100,000 sq km) of land have burned since 1 July 2019. At least 28 people have died. And over a billion animals are estimated to have been killed to date. Of course, the actual toll will be much higher if major animal groups, such as insects, are included in these estimates.

The impacts of climate change – in particular, the consequences of the increasing frequency of extreme weather events on all life should be abundantly clear. People finally seem to be taking this seriously, but there is an undercurrent of opinion about the “naturalness” of wildfires. Some are still questioning the role of climate change in driving the Australian bushfires.

It is true that wildfires naturally occur in many parts of the world, and benefit plants and animals in ecosystems that have been uniquely shaped by fire over evolutionary time. And people have been using fire to manage ecosystems for thousands of years. We could learn a thing or two from Aboriginal people and the techniques they have traditionally used to prevent bushfires.

But make no mistake, the scientific evidence shows that human-caused climate change is a key driver of the rapid and unprecedented increases in wildfire activity. What is particularly worrying is the extent to which this is eroding the resilience of ecosystems across wide regions. Yes, it is plausible to expect most plants and animals that have adapted to fire will recover. But the ecological costs of huge, repetitive, high-severity wildfires on ecosystems could be colossal.

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A dead Koala is seen after bushfires swept through Kangaroo Island, Australia, 07 January 2020. EPA-EFE/David Marius
Out of control

And it’s unclear how much the natural world can tolerate such dramatic disturbance. Wildfires are increasing in severity around the world. The Australian bushfires are larger than some of the deadliest recorded. Incidences are also increasing in ecosystems where wildfires are uncommon, such as the UK uplands. Not to mention the widespread deliberate burning of areas of high conservation value for agriculture, as has been recently reported in large parts of the Brazilian Amazon for beef production and in Indonesia for palm oil.

Unsurprisingly, given the shocking numbers of animals that must have perished as a result of these wildfires, many are questioning whether burned ecosystems can recover from such dramatic losses of biodiversity. In Australia, for example, some estimate that the fires could drive more than 700 insect species to extinction.

The world’s biodiversity is already severely struggling – we are in the midst of what scientists describe as the sixth mass extinction. A recent report has highlighted that about a quarter of assessed species are threatened with extinction. Australia already has the highest rate of mammal loss for any region in the world, signalling the fragility of existing ecosystems that might struggle to function in a warming, fire prone world.

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Carcasses of cows killed in a bushfire in a field in Coolagolite, New South Wales, Australia, 1 January 2020. EPA-EFE/Sean Davey

Fears for familiar and charismatic animals affected by the bushfires, such as koala, have been expressed by conservationists. The outlook for already critically endangered species, such as the regent honeyeater and western ground parrot, meanwhile, is uncertain. But to establish the true ecological costs of wildfires it is important to consider biodiversity in terms of networks, not particular species or numbers of animals.

All species are embedded in complex networks of interactions where they are directly and indirectly dependent on each other. A food web is a good example of such networks. The simultaneous loss of such large numbers of plants and animals could have cascading impacts on the ways species interact – and hence the ability of ecosystems to bounce back and properly function following high-severity wildfires.

A fragile system

And so it’s key that we consider biodiversity loss due to wildfires in terms of entire networks of interacting organisms, including humans, rather than simply one or two charismatic animals. I have studied and recently published research about the loss of plants and animals due to wildfires in Portugal, using new methods in ecology that can examine the resilience of ecosystems to species extinctions. My team found that networks of interacting plants and animals at burned sites became fragile and more prone to species extinctions.

Our study looked at the impacts of a large wildfire in 2012 on one of the many ecological interactions that keep ecosystems healthy – insect pollination. We examined the responses of moths, which are important but often overlooked pollinators, to wildfire by comparing those we caught in burned and neighbouring unburned areas.

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The hummingbird hawk moth. Research in Portugal is revealing the importance of moths as pollinators. Claudio306/Shutterstock.com

By collecting, counting and identifying the thousands of pollen grains they were carrying, we were able to decipher the plant-insect network of interacting species. In this way, it was possible to examine not only the responses of the plants and animals to wildfire, but crucially the impacts on pollination processes.

We then used these networks to model the resilience of the ecosystem more generally. We found that burned areas had significantly more abundant flowers (due to a flush of plants whose seeds and roots survived in the soil) but less abundant and species‐rich moths. The total amount of pollen being transported by the moths in burned areas was just 20% of that at unburned areas.

Our analysis revealed important differences in the way these species interacted as a result of the wildfire. Although the study was only a snapshot in time, we were able to show that plant-insect communities at burned sites were less able to resist the effects of any further disturbances without suffering species extinctions.

And so as people start rebuilding their homes, livelihoods and communities in Australia following the devastating bushfires, it is crucial that governments and land managers around the world take sensible decisions that will build resilience into ecosystems. To do this, ecological interaction networks need to be considered, rather than specific species. Cutting-edge network approaches that examine the complex ways in which entire communities of species interact can and should help with this.

Over 45 years ago, the American evolutionary ecologist and conservationist Dan Janzen wrote: “There is a much more insidious kind of extinction: the extinction of ecological interactions.” We should all be concerned not just about the loss of animals, but about the unravelling of species interactions within ecosystems on which we all depend for our survival


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Re: The Australian Bushfires

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Australia’s NSW state calls end to brutal fire season

By Reuters• 31 March 2020

MELBOURNE, March 31 (Reuters) - New South Wales, the Australian state most severely affected by last summer's wildfires on Tuesday marked the official close to its worst ever bushfire season, which burned more than 6% of the state's land area and killed 25 people.

* Australia saw 33 fatalities during worst ever season

* Some 6.2% of NSW state’s land area burned

* At least 1 billion native animals estimated killed nationally

* Next fire season ‘only months away’


The country’s devastating fire season, which lasted from September until torrential rains hit in February, killed 33 people and a billion native animals nationally. It destroyed some 2,500 homes and a wilderness area the size of South Korea.

The season was unprecedented in terms of fire conditions, the loss of lives and property, and the threat to communities across large parts of the state, NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said.

“We continue to thank our members’ families, colleagues and employers for allowing our volunteers to provide such a great level of protection to the people of NSW,” he said in a statement.

“Time and time again, we’ve heard from affected areas how the incredible work of firefighters on the ground, backed up by the crews in the air, have helped save people and property.”

Three local volunteer firefighters and three U.S. firefighters were among those killed in NSW.

Many residents impacted by the fires are still waiting for insurance payouts, according to local media reports, while coronavirus-linked travel restrictions have meant many tourist areas in the state will not see an influx of spenders to shore up their struggling economies.

“While the focus now for all of us is rightly on the coronavirus response effort, the next bush fire season will begin in only a matter of months, so keep your property prepared and have your bush fire survival plan up to date and discussed with those in your family and household,” Fitzsimmons said.

Australian summers are now effectively twice as long as its winters as climate change has increased temperatures since the middle of the last century, according to research by the Australia Institute, a think-tank based in the capital.

While global emissions have fallen as a result of a downturn in aviation and other industries in the wake of the coronavirus, policy makers contend it may not have a long lasting impact on slowing climate change. (Reporting by Melanie Burton; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)


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