I don't think your reading of this is quite correct (or perhaps the implication that I'm incorrectly reading into it). The species didn't quite "disappear", as all of the ones claimed to have done so after the 1972 fire were able to be tracked during the 1980 fire... This suggests to me that they were repopulated according to the carrying capacity of the habitat (which itself recovered), either from areas outside of the study area or from the small populations that remained
Yes, this is my reading too. I didn't mean to imply that they became extinct, just that they were wiped out from the area by the fire.
At any rate, the centrally-trumpeted claims that these animals have already died based on habitat destruction is plainly false.
I don't understand what this means ("these animals have already died based on habitat destruction is plainly false")?
This study showed that the fires wiped out the animals under survey. If the same pattern is shown here we'd expect the majority of small mammals to be dead in the fire areas.
> I didn't mean to imply that they became extinct, just that they were wiped out from the area by the fire
Right, what I meant was that it's easy to infer from your phrasing (as I did) that the animals were wiped out (even if just locally) in a way whose implications wouldn't include the population being restored (or mostly restored) within a couple years, as was the case for most of the populations studied (a couple of them did permanently dwindle to zero). I don't think this was necessarily implied by your comment, but I thought it'd be better to clarify for our and others readers' benefit.
> I don't understand what this means
Sorry for the poor phrasing. I'm referring to the central claim parrotted by news articles, that half a billion animals _have_ died during the fires, as opposed to the forecast that half a billion will die due to habitat destruction (which I claim in the rest of the comment is itself a suspect estimate).
> This study showed that the fires wiped out the animals under survey.
I don't believe this is accurate. They sampled ~zero animals in the study area, which is easily (and much more likely) explained by the animals spending less time in the burned area until the habitat was restored. The surviviros could easily have been leading fulfilling lives 300 yards away (bearing in mind that the study area was a 700x700 ft square). "no animals don't spend time in recently-burned areas" is a substantially different finding from "burned areas cause total animal death".
This is why the comparison to the wildfires is hairy. The effect depends a lot more on migration dynamics than simple assumptions of total death based on carrying capacity per species. An additional wrinkle for expanding the dynamic in this study to the scope of all animals affected by the wildfire is the fact that it's limited to small mammals: if I'm not mistaken, it's a fairly basic tenet of ecology that a collapse in prey population due in part to predation is accompanied by a boom in predator population, for obvious reasons (followed by oscillations in both populations until equilibrium is reached).
I'm referring to the central claim parrotted by news articles, that half a billion animals _have_ died during the fires
Well that seems to be what the claim actually is[1].
I don't believe this is accurate. They sampled ~zero animals in the study area, which is easily (and much more likely) explained by the animals spending less time in the burned area until the habitat was restored. The survivors could easily have been leading fulfilling lives 300 yards away (bearing in mind that the study area was a 700x700 ft square). "no animals don't spend time in recently-burned areas" is a substantially different finding from "burned areas cause total animal death"
I don't have access to the full report, but this would surprise me. Have you ever seen what a bushfire does?
Large ones have fire fronts tens of kilometers wide and anything in bushland dies. Here[2] is a before and after pic on Kangaroo Island from the fires there that are happening at the moment. Here's a picture of a car after a bushfire went over it[3]. That silver on the ground is the wheels and engine block melted. Bushfires in Australia are nasty because the Eucalyptus oil makes them very hot - the radiant heat can kill 400m away[4].
This fire is worse than normal too, because the fire fronts are so wide. There isn't some place 300 yards away for animals to escape to.
Yes, this is my reading too. I didn't mean to imply that they became extinct, just that they were wiped out from the area by the fire.
At any rate, the centrally-trumpeted claims that these animals have already died based on habitat destruction is plainly false.
I don't understand what this means ("these animals have already died based on habitat destruction is plainly false")?
This study showed that the fires wiped out the animals under survey. If the same pattern is shown here we'd expect the majority of small mammals to be dead in the fire areas.