Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00555:body:0:p53
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00555
Segment Type: other
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Character Range: 171061–173945

complex response, along with balancing the need of social and economic factors, makes managing fire risk for species conservation challenging, now and into the future (William et al. 2009; Clarke 2008).
Of major concern for biodiversity are large infrequent fires (>10,000 ha) in temperate eucalypt forests on the eastern seaboard (Bradstock 2008). Droughts, exacerbated by climate warming, are inextricably linked with large, infrequent fires (Bradstock 2008; Hughes 2003) and are responsible for the loss of significant numbers of animals and species survival (DELWP 2020; van Eeden et al. 2020). Fires which burn the forest crown pose a direct threat to arboreal species found in these forests, including the Koala (Jurskis and Potter 1997; Phillips 1990; Phillips et al. 2021; van Eeden et al. 2020).
In the summer of 2019–2020, Australia experienced bushfires of unprecedented scale, with estimates of three billion native animals killed – mammals, birds, reptiles and frogs, among many other orders of animals – including an estimated 61,000 Koalas killed, injured or affected in some way (van Eeden et al. 2020). Listed Koala populations were directly impacted (Phillips et al. 2021). Fires razed 3,659,625 ha (9%) of the area within which the listed Koala and its habitat are known or likely to occur, with the majority lost in New South Wales (3,466,578 ha or 94% of the total area of listed Koala habitat burned) (TSSC 2021) (Appendix 4). Despite the initially devastating impact of large fires, evidence indicates biota generally recover (Bradstock 2008) and that it is the frequency of fires (which incorporates both unplanned and prescribed burning) that has the strongest effect on biota (Bradstock 2008). Whether this concept holds up for the recovery of all species following the scale of the summer bushfires in 2019–2020 remains to be seen.
Fire threatens Koala populations through immediate mortality and injury, and via altered habitat that reduces food availability and increased exposure to predators (Lunney et al. 2007; Phillips et al. 2021; Zylstra 2019). It is also likely that changes in energy balances caused by increased exposure to temperature extremes (either heat or cold) increases physiological stress to individuals (Davies et al. 2013; Lunney et al. 2014; Narayan and Williams 2016) that survive fires, also reducing population recovery. The landscape configuration, proximity to source populations, and the intensity and extent of fire will influence how quickly Koalas repopulate habitat following fire (Lunney et al. 2002, 2004) as does the level of exposure to post-fire threats, such as dogs (Melzer et al. 2000; Lunney et al. 2007). However, at the landscape level, there is a paucity of research on the impacts of fire regimes and the influence of the resulting shifting habitat mosaic on recolonisation (e.g. attributes of in-situ refugia)