Koala deaths

[Yoshistar888]

Today I woke up to this article:

Koalas ‘Functionally Extinct’ After Australia Bushfires Destroy 80% Of Their Habitat

Are both the death toll number and the habitat loss estimate accurate? I find it hard to believe that 80% of all koala habitat, an area the length of the US eastern seaboard went up in flames in 1-2 months.

nah that’s a fib. Death toll I’m not sure but the thing is although a lot of habitat was burned the areas where koalas are most concentrated weren’t even close to the fires.

 

[RatioTile]

Also, if so much wildlife is threatened by these bushfires, then how did they survive the fire-prone area for millennia? Unlike the Amazon, Australian ecosystems evolved to deal with fire, so theoretically their wildlife shouldn't be in this much trouble. Is it because this fire season has been particularly bad?

 

[Yoshistar888]

Also, if so much wildlife is threatened by these bushfires, then how did they survive the fire-prone area for millennia? Unlike the Amazon, Australian ecosystems evolved to deal with fire, so theoretically their wildlife shouldn't be in this much trouble. Is it because this fire season has been particularly bad?

Australian bushfires and bushfires around the world are very different, the severity is much larger and we have a lot of hot dry and windy days which spread fire easily. Our climate is also extremely variable especially in the south, for example last Tuesday in Melbourne the temperature dropped from 40 C, to 22C in a span of 5 minutes. If you use farinheilt that is 104 F to 71.6 F.

We can get 14 C days in summer and 34 C days in winter, our climate is extremely variable and is only becoming more so.

Also our wildlife is no where near fast enough to escape our intense bushfires and firestorms, and not many animals can survive.

also eucalyptus don’t help, the fire uses the extremely heat resistant trees to spread it self to more areas.

 

[TinoPup]

They were saying the species was "functionally extinct" before the fires, too. It's a BS term used to get article clicks.

The IUCN doesn't make their decisions lightly. From the koala's page:

The conservation status of the Koala has been contested (Melzer et al. 2000; The Senate Environment and Communications References Committee 2011), in part because of uncertainty about relevant population parameters and marked variation in population trends across its large range. The overall rate of decline in population size over the last 18-24 years (=three generations) was estimated at about 28% by the Threatened Species Scientific Committee (2012), with this rate substantially influenced by a severe decline in inland regions most exposed to recent drought. A separate expert elicitation process involving independent estimates (from 15 Koala experts) of population size in every bioregion inhabited by Koalas concluded that the Koala population size reduction or projected reduction over three generations is a mean of 29%, albeit with substantial variation amongst experts in estimation of this rate (McAlpine et al. 2012). Climate change is expected to lead to an increased rate of population reduction over the next 20-30 years, and the impacts of other threats will magnify over this period. Here we consider that the conservation status of the Koala is border-line between Near Threatened and Vulnerable, but we adopt a precautionary assessment given the proximity of the estimated current and projected rate of decline to the threshold, and published assessments of the likelihood of additional and compound impacts due to climate change (Woinarski et al. 2014)

 

[Chlidonias]

Also, if so much wildlife is threatened by these bushfires, then how did they survive the fire-prone area for millennia? Unlike the Amazon, Australian ecosystems evolved to deal with fire, so theoretically their wildlife shouldn't be in this much trouble. Is it because this fire season has been particularly bad?

Australian bushfires and bushfires around the world are very different, the severity is much larger and we have a lot of hot dry and windy days which spread fire easily. Our climate is also extremely variable especially in the south, for example last Tuesday in Melbourne the temperature dropped from 40 C, to 22C in a span of 5 minutes. If you use farinheilt that is 104 F to 71.6 F.

We can get 14 C days in summer and 34 C days in winter, our climate is extremely variable and is only becoming more so.

Also our wildlife is no where near fast enough to escape our intense bushfires and firestorms, and not many animals can survive.

also eucalyptus don’t help, the fire uses the extremely heat resistant trees to spread it self to more areas.

Also, today's eucalyptus forests are not the same as pre-European forests. Before, fires would burn through frequently and quickly, but now with fires prevented as much as possible all that oil-rich debris from the trees builds up in the forests and so when fires do get started they have masses of fuel and create monstrous fire-storms.

 

[TeaLovingDave]

They were saying the species was "functionally extinct" before the fires, too. It's a BS term used to get article clicks.

Indeed; it's the same group which made similar claims back in May, which were refuted at the time.

The following direct quote details their personal definition of the term "functionally extinct" incidentally:

"Functionally extinct means that a koala living today might have one joey and that joey may or may not have a joey, if they don’t, that’s functionally extinct."

 

[Chlidonias]

Indeed; it's the same group which made similar claims back in May, which were refuted at the time.

The following direct quote details their personal definition of the term "functionally extinct" incidentally:

"Functionally extinct means that a koala living today might have one joey and that joey may or may not have a joey, if they don’t, that’s functionally extinct."

Huh, so I guess humans are functionally extinct as well. Good to know of our impending doom.

 

[Terry Thomas]

Today I woke up to this article:

Koalas ‘Functionally Extinct’ After Australia Bushfires Destroy 80% Of Their Habitat

Are both the death toll number and the habitat loss estimate accurate? I find it hard to believe that 80% of all koala habitat, an area the length of the US eastern seaboard went up in flames in 1-2 months.

At one stage there was a total fire front stretching over 6000 kilometres. The total area burnt so far, and there are still many wildfires not yet contained, is huge. I will try to get more info for you.

 

[Terry Thomas]

Today I woke up to this article:

Koalas ‘Functionally Extinct’ After Australia Bushfires Destroy 80% Of Their Habitat

Are both the death toll number and the habitat loss estimate accurate? I find it hard to believe that 80% of all koala habitat, an area the length of the US eastern seaboard went up in flames in 1-2 months.

At the present time there about 60 fires still burning in NSW. Queensland, Victoria, South Australia , Western Australia and Tasmania all have several fires still out of control. One Tasmanian fire is within a forest area that has not been known to burn during the last thousand years.
In NSW the fires have burned an estimated 1.6 million hectares, Q'LD., 180,000 hectares, Vic., over 60,000 hectares and in South Aust., 1 fire alone has burned 5000 hectares.
Most of these fires have happened in the past few weeks and several have now joined up to form a 6000 kilometre fire front in NSW alone.
The loss of wildlife is impossible to estimate. All animal life has been effected, and this will continue to happen, due to loss of habitat, food and water supplies. Many that survived the fires will now be lost and it is quite possible that some species may never recover. Larger fires have happened in the past, but mainly in more remote, less populated areas. The fires this year have hit the most populated and forested regions of the East coast.
And it is still springtime, so we still have get through the summer!!

 

[RatioTile]

Here's a follow-up on the topic:

No, koalas aren't 'functionally extinct'—yet

 

[DavidBrown]

Here is another story about koalas not being functionally extinct. It is from the New York Times and traces where the "functionally extinct" misinformation came from: Koalas Aren’t Extinct, but Their Future Is in Danger, Experts Say

 

[RatioTile]

This article came out today; any thoughts? It claims koalas may become extirpated from one of the Australian states (the middle one of the three in its main range).

Koalas on course to be extinct in NSW by 2050, inquiry finds