Until last week, the
Kangaroo Island glossy black cockatoo was one of Australia’s conservation
success stories. Thanks to a recovery program that began in 1995, its wild population
increased from 150 to 400, and its status was downgraded from critically endangered
to endangered.
Now it’s part of an
unfolding horror story.
Fires have raged
across nearly 50 percent of Kangaroo Island, a 4,400-square-kilometer isle off
the coast of the state of South Australia, destroying the habitat of the great
majority of the birds. It’s unclear how many glossy black cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus lathami halmaturinus) survived.
For those that escaped the flames, food may be scarce; it eats the seeds of single
tree species in its habitat, the drooping she oak.
Many years of hard
work have gone up in smoke and “it’s a big step backwards for the recovery team,”
says Daniella Teixeira, a conservation biologist at the University of
Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, who has studied and worked to protect the birds for the last four years. Even if just a quarter of
the population has been killed, the subspecies could end up back on the
critically endangered list, she says.
Similar stories are playing out across
Australia, where, as of January
12, months of wildfires had burned nearly 11 million hectares — an area larger
than the nation of Guatemala. More than 2,200 homes have gone up in flames and
29 people have been killed, and there are still two months of bushfire season
left to go. Already, the toll on animals and plants, many of which are evolutionarily
unique and endemic to the continent, is mind-boggling.
It’s an ecological disaster unprecedented in the nation’s history. More than 1 billion animals have been killed so far, says Christopher Dickman, an ecologist at the University of Sydney. That estimate has been extrapolated based on previous calculations of the number of Australian animals lost over a given area due to land-clearing practices.
The true number could
be much higher, however, as this estimate does not include bats, frogs or invertebrates.
“Invertebrates make up more 95 percent of animal species and the vast majority
of animal biomass,” says Mike Lee, a biologist at the South Australian Museum
in Adelaide. Invertebrate losses alone could therefore number in the trillions.
He fears for species including the vulnerable Richmond birdwing butterfly (Ornithoptera richmondia) and numerous peacock
spiders, these “jewels of the
arachnid world,” whose habitats in eastern Australia have been badly impacted (SN: 5/14/19).
The extreme intensity
of the fires and the speed with which they have moved – thrust forward in some instances by winds of up
to 60 kilometers per hour — have also added to the death toll. As a result, largely
tree-bound species such as koalas and fluffy
swooping marsupials called greater gliders have had little chance to escape (SN: 7/2/18). Even many birds, which can
fly away, have become disorientated by smoke and strong winds and killed.
Many habitats have
been destroyed as well, setting up a crisis that will continue long after the
fires die down. Even if animals such as small marsupials survive the fires,
they may have no suitable habitat or food remaining — and they also face
threats from cats and foxes, introduced predators that return to burnt
landscapes and prey on survivors left exposed in habitats devoid of cover.