Australasian Science — May-June 2017

38 ||MAY/JUNE 2017

W

alking through the bush on a hot summer’s

day in south-eastern Australia, you can’t help

being aware of the lurking threat of bush-

fires. This awareness is part and parcel of

living in this region where the hot, dry summers have frequent

days of extreme bushfire risk.

In the tall forests of Victoria, severe bushfires are a reason-

ably common event, with at least five significant fires in the

past 100 years. Alarmingly, climate change models are predicting

increases in the frequency and ferocity of bushfires in this region

in the future. Like other ecological disturbances, bushfires can

have profound impacts on both individual species and the

composition of whole biological communities.

Our research sought to find out how severe bushfire events

impact the long-term survival of frogs in the tall forests of south-

eastern Australia. Frogs are in trouble globally, with up to 40%

of species facing imminent extinction. In Victoria the situa-

tion is bleak, with 50% of Victoria’s 30 frog species listed as

threatened.

The threats frogs are facing include habitat destruction and

fragmentation, climate change and disease. However, whether

bushfires should also be included in this list, and what impact

The Future of Frogs

in the Face of Fire

JANE MELVILLE & DOMINQUE POTVIN

The increasing risk of bushfires due to climate change is escalating the risk of extinction for

frogs in Australia’s south-east.

The effective population sizes
of brown tree frogs and
(inset) Victorian tree frogs
crashed following the Black
Saturday fires and had not
fully recovered at the end of
the study. D. Paul/Museums Victoria