Australia’s 2020 Wildfires — What Was the Effect?

The 2019–2020 bushfire period caused incredible impact for the region both in the long and short term — whether that’s judged by sheer numbers of trees destroyed in forests, how much biodiversity was impacted or public health stats. Each metric is important when considering it’s broad depth of impact.

Physical Impact

Over 18 million hectares of land was set aflame during Australia’s bushfire season of 2019–2020 (around mid January) according to media reports. This destroyed over 5,900 buildings including at least 2,800 homes in the area.

Looking past direct human impact, it was reported that multi-millions of animals were killed from heat, suffocation or burning.

Ongoing ecological impact

After the initial fire, UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), an estimated 1 billion animals (and many more bats and insects) died over the following weeks and months due to lack of habitat and resources like food and water.

This is an incredibly large loss in itself, but is even worse considering the incredible biodiversity that was reduced that season. The world’s terrestrial biodiversity is concentrated in our forests — an estimated home to over 80% of terrestrial species of animal, plant and insect.

Extreme weather affects such as “Megafires” are becoming more more common with global warming. With over one million animals currently facing extinction, it’s not looking good for maintaining our natural landscape and it’s biodiversity.

Public Health

As a result of intense smoke and air pollution stemming from the fires, in January 2020 reports indicated that Canberra measured the worst air quality index of any major city in the world. Wildfires produce poisonous smoke, deadly for humans and most other biodiversity. Further away, fine particle air pollution continues to affect human health.

People in Sydney wearing masks after the bushfire in January 2020(iStockPhoto.com)

Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free

People wear breathing masks to protect themselves from a thick smoke haze from the bushfires, in Melbourne, Australia January 14, 2020.

Cross Boarder Impact

Smoke from wildfires can travel great distances. It is often pushed into the stratosphere by the heat from fires. Smoke from bushfires in Australia has drifted across the Pacific and may have reached the Antarctic, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Notably, the air pollution significantly reduced air quality in Australia, New Zealand and cities across South America after smoke reached both Argentina and Chile.

Economic Impact

Any economic impacts estimate could be wildly inaccurate from the extreme fire but we know there was sufficient damage to infrastructure as well as significant damage to industries like agriculture and tourism.

Climate feedback loops

UNEP explains:

The bushfires have not only been made more likely and intense by climate change, they also add to it. Until the 2019 — 2020 Australian bushfire season, the forests in Australia were thought to reabsorb all the carbon released in bushfires across the country. This would mean the forests achieved net zero emissions. However, global warming is making bushfires burn more intensely and frequently and the 2019 — 2020 bushfires have already emitted 400 megatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to the Copernicus monitoring programme. This is as much as Australia’s average annual carbon dioxide emissions in just the past three months. These will increase Australia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming, and heighten the likelihood of recurring megafires that will release yet more emissions. This is a deeply concerning climate feedback loop.

Image by iStockPhoto.com

Deep Pollution

Wildfire ash landed all over Australia and substantial coverings of countries around the world. The Ash landed in agricultural farmland, water treatment reserves, fresh water stores.

This can be a positive, bringing new nutrients to farmland or seas or rivers. However, too much nutrients in lakes for example can cause algae blooms — severely negatively affecting that ecosystem by blocking light to lake plants and ultimately killing its food chain. A similar impact can be seen in huge plankton blooms at sea, suffocating coral reefs.

Conclusion

Although the wildfires have had wide and far reaching negative long term affects for the environment, there is the positive that the public is seeing the extreme weather conditions first hand that climate change can cause. Hopefully this will inspire and let the general population think about their environmental impact to help limit future extreme weather events.

About Us

Our name is Valuuti and we want to do some good in the world and help fight climate change.

We’re a small start-up brand with an important mission — help nature and fight climate change! Specifically, we want to work with endangered animal charities, plant trees, clean up beaches and start/aid carbon capture and other environmental regeneration projects.

We also want to increase awareness through our environmental blog — talking about important issues, environmental wins and Valuuti updates. Please follow us along for our journey!

In the next few months, we’re launching our sustainable clothing brand, each design linked to its own unique cause and charity. We’ll have: