Quantifying the impacts of fire on koalas...

Suprisingly little is known about the direct impacts of bushfires on wild koala populations. This paper looks at changes that occurred in koala occupancy rates across 6 spatially independent fire grounds affected during the 2019 - 20 bushfire season.  We only examined sites that we had contemporaneous (i.e. current koala gerneration) survey data for. Our reassessment of 123 field sites revealed a median reduction in habitat use by koalas of 71% when results were standardised against pre-fire survey data. This is a big number and signals a precarious future for koalas in the face of forecast increases in both fire severity and frequency as a consequence of climate change.  The paper makes several recommendations for management of surviving populations.