Birdlife Shoalhaven Bushfire Research Report
Birdlife Shoalhaven is monitoring the after effects of the devastating Currawon bushfire on the New South Wales South Coast. They have just released their 2020 report.
A typical scene as the bush recovers from the fire seventeen months earlier. This White-throated Treecreeper reaches the truncated top of the fire affected tree it has been feeding on.
The long-term aim of the project is to examine changes in bird species richness and abundance in the Shoalhaven in the post-fire period. The report analyses changes at 115 survey sites within the fire footprint and 52 sites outside the fire footprint as a comparison. They use BirdLife’s Birdata 20 minute, 2 hectare survey technique to survey bird species and numbers.
They found that bird numbers and species numbers increased on average during the year across lightly to heavily burnt sites and the recovery in numbers of birds was greater in lightly burnt areas. Outside of the fire footprint the number of species did not change significantly but bird numbers actually decreased through the year, perhaps as birds moved back into recovering burnt areas?
The small peninsular at Dee Beach near Bendalong on the New South Wales south coast was heavily burnt and the soil was barren after the fire. This photo was taken last April 2020, four months after the fire.
The same area in May 2021, another year and one month later. A head high swathe of acacia and eucalypts now forms an impenetrable cover, a happy hunting ground for insect eating birds.
While the detailed picture is very complicated there is no doubt that the heavier rains of the last year have helped the recovery of the birds. And that more research on this critical issue is badly needed. If there had been better baseline data from before the fires this would have provided a better picture of the fires effect. Birdlife Shoalhaven are to be congratulated on undertaking this important project.
The recovery is very different at the Walter Hood Beach survey site. Other than a handful of Banksias at the beach edge, the trees are all dead and the green cover beneath them is less than a metre high. There were no birds on this site when it was last surveyed.