It is believed 60,000 koalas were killed,injured or lost habitat,with the worst losses on Kangaroo Island where 40,000 were killed or harmed in some way.
About 11,000 koalas were hit in Victoria and 8000 in NSW according to a new report into the impact of the fires on native wildlife,which confirms an earlier overall estimate but provides far more detail about the losses.
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Professor Chris Dickman of the University of Sydney,who oversaw the research on behalf of the Worldwide Fund for Nature Australia,said the impact on reptiles was so high because they live in such great densities in some of the worst affected areas,with small lizards such as skinks reaching densities of 1800 per hectare.
Researchers mapped the path of the 15,000 fires over 11.46 million hectares of the total 19 million hectares that burnt over the summer,and married it with existing data about animal densities in the areas hit.
They did not directly estimate numbers of animals killed because research about how different animals may survive fires is limited,and the factors that contribute to impact are varied. For example some species can flee faster and others are more resilient at surviving later in a burnt landscape.
Professor Dickman said this resilience may cause some"generalist"introduced species – such as black and brown rats – to thrive in the aftermath and further displace native animals.