Koala populations have been decimated by bushfires in recent years – and researchers are forecasting that bushfires will threaten them and their habitat even more in coming decades.
Koala populations have been decimated by bushfires in recent years – and researchers are forecasting that bushfires will threaten them and their habitat even more in coming decades.
A team of experts in ecology and species distribution modelling has studied the impact climate change is having on fire risk across the forests koalas depend on, finding a significant increase in susceptibility of these habitats to bushfires.
Through generating fire susceptibility maps for the present and in the year 2070, researchers were able to identify the threat that wildfires pose to koalas now and under future climate change, and found alarming outcomes.
Presently, 39.56% of koala habitat in Australia is highly susceptible to bushfires, but the modelling predicts this will rise to 44.61% by 2070. These percentages also reflect a general increase in the susceptibility of all Australian vegetation to bushfires.
Read more at Flinders University
Photo Credit: Angelo_Giordano via Pixabay
