Impacts of wildlife habitat loss & bushfires

With bushfires adding more chaos and causing further stress on the survival of our native species, what can we expect?

Habitat loss is just one of the issues impacting our Australian wildlife on a daily basis. This issue has been further compounded due to the bushfire crisis.

In 2018 a joint report released by RSPCA Queensland and WWF-Australia highlighted habitat loss as a major driver of extinction.

Now, once natural ecosystems have been destroyed by fire too... so what’s the impact?

Animals that usually thrive and depend on forest and bushland environments are those that live or nest in trees or logs, require the shelter of trees, or depend on trees for their food nectar, such as fruits, leaves or arboreal insects.

Usually calling our bushland and forest areas home are: bushland birds, honey eaters, owls, parrots, curlews, emus, cassowaries, flying foxes, koalas, wallabies, echidnas, goannas and other lizard species, gliders, possums, quolls, antechinus, dunnarts, phascogales, bandicoots, native rodents.

Read what RSPCA Queensland is doing next for rescued wildlife with no home to go back to.

Koalas depend on certain eucalypt species for food, and on many other tree species for shelter. Sadly, isolated populations of koalas die of starvation when they are unable to access new habitat patches. View some of our koala bushfire survivors that have come through our Wildlife Hospital here. 

A recent RSPCA animal rescue saw a female Yellow-Bellied glider come into our Wildlife Hospital at Wacol.

They are very rare visitors to our centre as they are usually quite elusive and hard to spot in the wild. 

This poor glider was found stuck in a barbed wire fence. Our team removed the fence from her patagium (wing membrane) and she has been placed on medication and is now residing with a wildlife carer for rehabilitation before she can be released.

2019 has been the hottest and driest year on record in Australia. Let’s hope there is a reprieve from hot and dry conditions on the horizon!