Dr Cris Brack is an Associate Professor of the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. His areas of expertise include Plant Physiology, Forestry Management and Environment.
He is a member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia (IFA) and the Director of the National Arboretum Canberra Foundation.
In an interview with SBS Persian, Dr Brack explains the impact of recent bushfires on native species, what preventative actions can be done and how modern technology can help us to fight the fires.
- Dr Brack, thanks for the time that you devoted to this interview with SBS Persian. As the first question, is the current damage to the environment similar to the ones that happened during recent years bushfires?
Australia has had “hot” fires before. Haven’t had such a large area burning all at once and linking up over a thousand km, and haven’t had such extensive areas burning again so soon after a previous fire. Although the fire “season” has been known to start before summer in the past, this current season start well early and over very large areas. All these aspects make up the “disturbance regime” - and changing all the aspects of this regime at once would be extremely detrimental to plants and animals that do not have the time and multiple generations to adapt to it.
- How many endangered species of trees have been affected by these fires? Apart from Eucalyptus trees which are the iconic Australian trees and have been burning in large scale, what other native trees have been burnt?
There are about 800 species of Eucalypts across Australia occupying different environments and having different strengths and weaknesses against disturbance. Some (iconic River Red Gums) were already suffering from the drought while others (iconic Snow Guns and Ribbon Gums) were suffering insect-induced dieback. Fires making this worse!
- What is the effect of this on the animals?
Some fauna has very specific diets (e.g. koalas eat a restricted range of gum leaves, and in the NSW Southern Tablelands require access to lots of ribbon gum) however some trees become less palatable under stress, produce fewer leaves or die which removes this critical food resource.
Estimates of the number of individual faunas killed directly by fire or indirectly (starvation, loss of habitat, increased predation) are highly variable but would be over a billion (and that doesn’t include all the insects that lived in and fed off the forest floor litter).
- What preventative actions can be done to reduce the damage? What can be done now to minimise the environmental effect and accelerate the recovery process?
Big debates still going on with practitioners and scientists. Some argue to a reduction in the fuel loads in the forest - no fire without fuel - while others note that that “fuel” is habitat for many organisms who would perish without it. Also, the “fuel” keeps being regenerated by the trees and can return to pre-reduction levels in as little as 3 years ...requiring very expensive and destructive operations too often. So, maybe some targeted fuel reduction to protect (human?) assets and help break up large fires.
A return to indigenous burning practices could also reduce the probability of experiencing a fire season like the current one. However, these practices required a close and specific understanding of local domains and much of this knowledge will need to be recaptured after the dislocation of the local indigenous people for so long.
- Can huge bushfires like this affect the environment in the other parts of the world? Can they be a global issue?
Politically, these bushfires “should” create an international effect.
Socially/morally: Huge international interest in iconic Australian fauna, especially koalas, the extinction in the wild could certainly be classified as a global issue.
Directly to the environment: We know the smoke from the fires has travelled right around the world, and it has been documented that Australian bushfire smoke falling on the glaciers in New Zealand is discolouring them and resulting in faster glacier melt (i.e. not reflecting as much light so therefore heating the ice more). These bushfires have also released more than 50% of Australia’s “annual carbon/CO2 budget”, so by the end of the year the atmosphere will contain a lot more CO2 from Australia with consequent global climate change effects.
- And to conclude, would like to add anything?
Modern technology might help us get to and extinguish future fires before they have a chance to get too big. We used to believe that if you could get ground attack firefighting crews to a fire within 15 minutes of it starting you could extinguish it ...but if that initial attack was substantially delayed then you could rarely directly attack it and needed to rely on containment lines or other prepared defences. Maybe an army of firefighting drones could attack future fires fast enough. Of course, a total lack of fire would also be disadvantageous to many species that had evolved in the presence of fire, so they would be lots of argument and compromise on how much fire to let burn!
