Australia’s wildfires killed 90 per cent of small ground-based animals

By Alice Klein

Ed Zetera / Alamy

One of the first wildlife surveys conducted following Australia’s worst wildfires on record has found almost no small, ground-dwelling animals in burnt areas.

At the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, fires tore along Australia’s drought-stricken east coast and burned more than 5 million hectares of forest in the state of New South Wales alone.

In February and March, Frank Lemckert at environmental consulting firm Eco Logical Australia led a survey funded by WWF Australia of seven sites within the fire-ravaged areas of Gibraltar …