‘Devastating’: more than 61,000 koalas among 3 billion animals affected by bushfire crisis

A new report says 143 million mammals were affected in the 2019-20 blazes, one of the ‘worst wildlife disasters in modern history’

 

‘Devastating’: more than 61,000 koalas among 3 billion animals affected by bushfire crisis | Australia news | The Guardian

More than 61,000 koalas and almost 143 million other native mammals were likely in the path of the Australian bushfires of late 2019 and early 2020, according to a major assessment of the ecological toll of the “black summer” blazes.

The estimate from 10 researchers and scientists, contained in a report commissioned by environmental group WWF-Australia, recounts the devastating losses in habitats across the country.

Almost 3 billion animals, including 2.46 billion reptiles, were in the path of the flames, the report says – the same number the team calculated in an interim report, revealed in July by the Guardian.

‘Catastrophic’ bushfire burns half of Queensland’s Fraser Island and threatens ecological disaster

Dermot O’Gorman, chief executive of WWF-Australia, says in a foreword that the report shows the fires were “one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history”.

Prof Chris Dickman, a University of Sydney ecologist who helped guide the project, told the Guardian: “The numbers [of animals affected] are absolutely huge. It’s really a call to arms to try and do something because under climate change these fires will happen again.”

Some 181 million birds and 51 million frogs also lived in habitats inside the burned areas, which covered 12.6m hectares – an area almost the size of England.Among the 143 million mammals affected were one million wombats, 5 million kangaroos and wallabies, 5 million bats, 39 million possums and gliders and 50 million native mice and rats.

About 5½ million bettongs, bandicoots, quokkas and potoroos were also affected.

The team wrote that because of a lack of data and knowledge of how species might survive, as well as uncertainties with how fire interacted with other threats, they couldn’t be sure how many of the 3 billion animals died.

“Even if resident animals were not killed outright by fires and managed to escape, they will surely have experienced higher subsequent risk of death as a result of injuries or later stress and deprivation of key resources,” the report says.

An estimated 61,353 koalas were affected, and O’Gorman wrote: “That is a devastating number for a species that was already sliding towards extinction in eastern Australia. We cannot afford to lose koalas on our watch.”

Between 43,261 and 95,180 koalas had been affected, with a middle estimate of 61,353.

In November, environment minister Sussan Ley announced a national census of the marsupial to address “a serious lack of data about where populations actually are”.

In NSW, a parliamentary inquiry has found koalas would be extinct in the state by 2050 without action to save habitat.

Australia after the bushfires

The WWF-Australia report says the fires affected as many as 14,736 koalas in the state.

Worst hit was Kangaroo Island in South Australia, where about 41,230 koalas were likely in the path of the fires that burned about half the island.

Dickman said the report was important because it documented impacts on Australian icons such as kangaroos and koalas alongside lesser-known, but unique and important wildlife.

“If you work in the forest environment then you know there’s a lot more animals living in these areas that don’t get the publicity – other fantastic charismatic animals like gliders that live alongside them and are being whittled away as well.”A range of techniques and sources were used to estimate the impacts on different species. Estimates for mammals were based on available data on the densities of species in different areas.

Reptile impacts were modelled and for birds, more than 100,000 surveys for BirdLife Australia were accessed. Some 67 frog species were mapped and their densities were estimated using previous research.

But large numbers of other species were likely to have been affected by the fires but were not included in the report.

The report says freshwater fish and crayfish are known to have been badly hit but could not be reliably estimated.

Authorities reported hundreds of thousands of fish dead after bushfire ash and mud washed into rivers.

The assessment also could not include arthropods – a group that includes insects, spiders and other bugs – but pointed to other research estimating trillions of these were likely affected.

The report includes 11 recommendations that call for better understanding of the impacts of bushfires, more research into species, where animals are, and better management of other threats.

“Alongside mortality caused by direct exposure to flames, smoke inhalation, heat, and sediment run-off, fire interacts with other stressors, exacerbating threats to the persistence of threatened species and ecosystems,” the report says.

“Three of the greatest threats to Australian flora, fauna, and ecosystems are altered fire regimes, invasive species, and land clearing; all threats that interact with and compound one another.”

Dickman, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, said: “A key step is to try and improve our monitoring of pretty much all the bioregions on the continent.

“We will be in a much better position to understand where populations are and we should then be in a better position to mitigate fires and floods and droughts.”

He said there were many animals that science knew little about, and as more extreme events affected species time could run out. “Windows progressively slam shut,” he said.

Dickman said just one example of the benefits of monitoring was that in the aftermath of the fires, the New South Wales government had dropped carrots and sweet potatoes into habitats of threatened brush-tailed rock wallabies.

That was only possible, he said, because the government knew where the wallabies lived.

Australia had a moral and ecological responsibility to save the animals, he said, because the vast majority of those affected existed nowhere else on Earth.

No charges against criminal egg thieves in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany:

In April 2020, nature lovers had observed two people collecting a whole basket full of eggs in a black-headed gull colony on Molf- lake (Rendsburg-Eckernförde district).
The police, who were called immediately, were there quickly and caught the two men in the act.

The photo shows the two egg thieves in action,

a sign at the Molf- lake, that says:
“Landscape protection area
Driving on the lake with any watercraft is prohibited.
Likewise, swimming to the seagull islands in an area of 50 meters from the islands”

and a black-headed gull from our archive.

The main perpetrator freely admitted that he had illegally stolen gull eggs from the bird colony for years in order to eat them.
Nevertheless, the public prosecutor’s office has now closed the case – because of “lack of public interest” (!!!)

Local conservationists have been looking for the egg thieves for a long time, and endangered black-headed gulls and lapwing breed in the colony – reason enough actually to accuse the repeat offenders of poaching.
The procedure has now been handed over to the responsible district administration.

We hope that the perpetrators have not yet got completely off the hook of the judiciary, because the case was handed over to the district administration for punishment as an administrative offense, and it is to be hoped that a hefty fine will be imposed there, at least.

https://www.facebook.com/Komitee.CABS

And I mean…There is only one explanation: the authorities got something from the eggs.
Maybe there is no public interest in the gull eggs, but for the eggs of the authorities… an active one!

My best regards to all, Venus

• Woman slaughtering rats at a market in Dong Thap, Vietnam (left), and vendor selling live rats in cages (right). Photo credit: WCS/Viet Nam (Huong, et al, 2020)

Coronavirus risk grows as animals move through wildlife trade

Click on this link to see all the photos:

Coronavirus risk grows as animals move through wildlife trade (mongabay.com)

• Animals consumed by people in Vietnam are increasingly likely to carry coronavirus as they move from the wild to markets to restaurants, a new study shows.
• The animals with the highest rates of infection are most likely to come into contact with humans.
• When animals are confined in crowded and stressful conditions, it makes it even easier for the virus to spread.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that when coronaviruses leap from wild animals to humans, the results can be devastating. A new study from Vietnam provides new insights about how this cross-species spread might happen.

Researchers showed for the first time that as animals move through the wildlife supply chain, from their natural habitats to marketplaces and ultimately to restaurants, they are more likely to become infected with coronaviruses, according to a report in PLOS One. And at each stage, people interact with these animals more intensively.

Coronaviruses are most notorious for causing human disease—including SARS, MERS, and COVID-19—but they are widespread in the animal kingdom. There are many different coronaviruses, and they can infect bats, rodents, birds, and domestic livestock like cattle and swine. Understanding where and how these viruses first make contact with humans is critical for preventing future pandemics.

To do this, the best place to start is at the wildlife-human interface: places where wild animals and humans are exposed to each other. A team of Vietnamese scientists, led by Nguyen Quynh Huong and Nguyen Thi Thanh Nga, along with Amanda Fine and Sarah Olson of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in New York, tested field rats for coronavirus at different points along the wildlife supply chain in Vietnam. They found that with each link in this chain, the percentage of infected animals increased by about 1.5 times.

This factor may not seem like much. However, it means the infection rates increased markedly: 20.7 percent of rats handled by wildlife traders, to 32 percent of rats in the markets, to 55.6 percent of rats in the restaurants.

“They did an amazing job at following the virus surveillance throughout the trade routes,” said senior field veterinarian Marc Valitutto of EcoHealth Alliance, who focuses on pandemic preparedness in Southeast Asia and China. Valitutto, who was not involved in the research, wasn’t aware of any other studies that traced infection rates along trade routes in as much detail.

The team also found that about 75 percent of bats on guano farms (constructed roosts where people collect and sell bat droppings for fertilizer) were infected with coronavirus. That was more than ten times the infection rate of 6.7 percent in naturally roosting bats.

The study demonstrated that the animals in closest contact with humans had the highest infection rates, said Fine. That’s critical to understanding how coronaviruses might infect villagers or city residents: The chance that a virus will transfer from wildlife to people is “directly increased by the number of contacts and the number of humans in that environment,” she said.

Further, when infected animals reach markets and restaurants, they are often housed in close quarters near many different kinds of animals. In such settings, coronaviruses can jump from species to species, said Olson. The team found direct evidence of this: rats and porcupines on a crowded wildlife farm carried coronaviruses from bats and birds.

That’s a noteworthy public health concern, according to Valitutto: Many coronaviruses that have caused major human outbreaks have jumped among a few different species before infecting people.

The authors noted a few caveats. For instance, cross-contamination between animals butchered in restaurants could have created some false positives tests—although such contamination is another way coronavirus could spread to human consumers, said Fine. Also, virus infections among animals are much higher during the wet season, but the team couldn’t sample every testing site during both wet and dry seasons.

Fine, Olson, and Valitutto all hope the sobering results of this study will help bring major changes to wildlife trade regulation in Vietnam and elsewhere to cut down on coronavirus transmissions.

“If this can’t change the status quo,” said Olson, “I don’t think anything can.”

Reptiles smuggled from Mexico found at German airport stitched inside dolls

German airport customs officers have found 26 rare reptiles – 10 of them dead – smuggled inside parcels of toys and sweets from Mexico.

Some of the dead animals had suffocated as they had been stitched inside cloth dolls, a statement from Cologne Bonn airport customs said.

The endangered horned lizards, alligator lizards and box turtles were destined for private buyers in Germany.

They are among many species that the global Cites accord seeks to protect.

German officials are now trying to trace the origin of the reptiles, using DNA samples.

It is not yet clear if they came from the wild or from captive breeding programmes. They were in two packages seized on 30 October and 8 November.

The customs service is collaborating with Mexican authorities and with zoologists at the Alexander Koenig Research Museum (ZFMK) in Bonn. The smugglers could be fined, if the police can identify them.

The 16 surviving reptiles might be returned to their Mexican habitat.

ZFMK’s work with customs mostly focuses on illegal goods made from poached endangered species, such as snakeskin handbags or furs.

The 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) has been signed by 182 states and the EU, and covers about 6,000 animal species and 30,000 plant types.

Reptiles smuggled from Mexico found at German airport stitched inside dolls – BBC News