Original subtitles

Australia has always been a land of extremes.

Its unique wildlife has adapted

to the vagaries of severe weather.

For millennia, fire is a force that has shaped

the nature of Australia.

But in 2019 came the Black Summer.

The most savage fire season in recorded history

signified a new phase in the climate crisis.

To see these places one after each other,

be destroyed, it's devastating.

What has been lost?

What is left now?

Have we lost whole animal cultures?

It's taken a lot from Australia.

I think that's why we're seeing

this huge reaction of love for the wildlife here.

People want to help, people want to care.

We've just gotta help them come back

and we've got to make things better

for when they do come back.

Over the course of a year,

we chart the recovery... After The Wildfires.

For three years, record-breaking droughts

have had Australia in their grip.

Rivers have disappeared, lakes vaporised...

and forests turned tinder dry.

2019 is recorded as the hottest

and driest year in the history books.

Extreme fire danger is declared

two months earlier than a typical year.

Now there is a heightened risk

of a fire-generated thunderstorm.

In August, dry lightning sparks the first fire.

Ancient forests rich with biodiversity, ignites.

These are the forest bastions

from which all of Australia's unique marsupials evolved...

..now, their world is on fire.

Radio 88-1 431,

request your assistance, over.

A lightning strike sparked

one of the biggest bushfires the world has ever seen.

A state of emergency has been declared,

crews calling the conditions as bad as it gets.

In places, the fire's become so violent

they create their own weather.

The scale of this bushfire emergency

is hard to get your head around.

The largest fire front in the country's history.

From Queensland...

into Western Australia...

Victoria, to New South Wales...

..it feels like the whole continent is on fire.

Off the coast of South Australia,

a blaze consumes half of Kangaroo Island,

home to 50,000 koalas.

For the slow-moving tree dweller, there's no escape.

At the western tip of the island,

Shona and Rick Fisher live on a small acreage.

With fires still burning, they check on their horses.

But they soon discover

it's the wildlife that needs their help.

Looking, looking, looking.

Over here, there might be some in the corner.

It's difficult to gauge

the full impact on the koala population,

but here they fear it could be catastrophic.

There doesn't seem to be anyone else

searching out this end.

We've become the koala people I suppose.

Rick and Shona assess if koalas can stay

or if they need to be rescued.

You're alright there, mate.

Might need some water.

Feet are burnt.

Can't put any weight on the back legs.

Oh, poor Mama, eh?

Poor Mama.

We only wanna take the ones that can't climb,

that need medical treatment.

Yes.

Sometimes they're asking for help.

They almost walk up to you.

But that's why we're out here doing it.

We're trying to save some of them.

How are you, eh?

Hey, little fella.

Well, this little boy's good, he can climb.

For many it's too late.

Mum...

he's dead.

- He's dead? - Mm.

Hey, sweetheart, hm?

Oh, this is one of the saddest things I've seen.

For her to be sitting here with her dead baby, that's just...

You know, it's horrible, so... but um...

It's heartbreaking.

The mother's best chance of survival

now rests in the hands of Shona and Rick.

But even now, she's not ready to leave her baby behind.

She's obviously traumatised, she's lost her baby.

Over the days following the fire,

Rick and Shona pick up over 120 koalas to take into care.

OK, you done there? Yep.

OK, no sweat, that's good.

As fires still burn, Shona and Rick head

to a makeshift koala hospital on the island.

Hey, pretty girl.

..and both hind paws.

Vets, volunteers and Defence Force soldiers

are on hand to treat the injured animals.

A number, and gonna put some cream on.

Under anaesthetic, the mother is assessed

and treated for burns.

I think that's the one that had the baby.

- Had a baby? - Oh, the baby died.

She was sitting next to it on the ground.

After the fires, more than 600 koalas are given

critical care in this emergency centre.

Well, today we're done, we've handed them in

and kept an eye on them and found out how they're going.

The mother koala that we found with the dead baby,

they're quite confident that she's gonna be fine.

She's got burns on all four feet,

but they're quite confident that she'll be OK.

At least 40,000 koalas died in the bushfire

that ravaged the island.

Those that survived, lost 80 percent of their habitat.

Few will ever return home.

It's a story repeated across the continent.

Before the fires, the majestic forests

of the New South Wales coast once stood as cathedrals,

reaching all the way to the sea.

Four weeks after the fires, the forests have become

a desolate place...

unrecognisable.

Across the Black Summer, 50 million hectares

have been reduced to ash in the space of a few months.

11,000 individual fires burnt through New South Wales alone.

The scale of the crisis is hard to fathom.

An area larger than England has been razed.

Survivors emerge into a landscape

stripped of food, water and shelter.

In the Southern Highlands, American naturalist,

John Creighton, searches for wombats

he's monitored for the last two years.

The first morning of the fire this place was still smoking.

The ground was ash.

Not a single leaf.

Trees were still smouldering.

There was no life, not a single bird.

It was a shocking, shocking sight.

And my hope is, those wombats that have found safety

in that area are still there and have survived this fire.

Instead, he finds a graveyard.

This is definitely wombat bones.

That's a hip bone.

Alright, so this wombat would have been caught

outside of its burrow

and I would say intense heat, died instantly.

And the temperatures that, to bring a bone to this nature

would've been crematorium temperatures.

Shocking, it's really just shocking

for this poor little guy.

Less optimistic, John resumes his search.

He knows many of the burrows in this area.

Finally, hope.

The noise I'm making is a greeting sound

for the wombats,

and if she trusts me, she'll come out.

Some of those burrows, they're 4, 10, 15, 20m long.

So, just by staying in their burrows,

they would have made it through.

Some of the other animals would've run into those burrows.

I think the echidna and the goanna.

I don't think the wombat was actually shepherding them

and saying, "Come on in, please,"

but the animals know where to go to get safe.

You know, the ones that did come out of their burrows

and survive, they were left with a world

with no food, no water.

It wouldn't have made much sense to them,

and they would've eventually just walked, looking,

trying to find new food.

The other ones that didn't, or couldn't,

would have died of thirst or starvation.

It's been a good six weeks since the fire's passed,

and still no real sign of edible, sustainable growth.

Things are growing back,

and there's shoots on trees and things coming up,

but this is not the stuff the wombat would eat.

At dusk, John lays out food

for the forest survivors.

The scent carries through the burnt bush as an invitation.

Nature will come back.

It's happening already, but it's going to take time.

In the Hunter Valley region,

the extreme summer is taking its toll.

Even where fire didn't reach, native animals are struggling.

With its webbed feet,

the platypus is not suited for travel over land.

But drought is forcing it to search

for the last of the water.

Further upstream, staff from a nearby

animal sanctuary are scouring the remaining puddles.

Rare Manning River turtles are found hunkered down

in the mud, trying to keep cool as the river dries.

For many, it's too late.

I've just walked the entire riverbed and found

countless turtles that are dead, and two dead platypus.

So, I think it hurts just a little bit more

because we've just missed them by this much.

They've only just died.

Wildlife carer, Hayley Shute continues searching

for survivors, in dire conditions.

- I've never seen a drought like this before.

I've never seen a river system in this kind of condition.

I can't put words to describe how devastating it is,

and how much everything needs water.

So, to see this, it's actually heartbreaking.

Nine platypus are found still alive.

The team relocates the healthy ones

into deeper pools and take five of the most

fragile into care.

Nearby, at the Wandandian Kangaroo and Wallaby Sanctuary,

the fires came right to the fence-line.

Well, I was thinking that, then I was like...

Putting animals before their own safety,

staff and volunteers returned to receive

an influx of injured roos.

That's for Tikki. Flame's being fed

- She's being fed now? - Yeah, Ash is being fed.

The injured roos are given fire-related names,

like Ash, Smoky and Sparkles.

Burnt feet are the most common injury,

but even stress can be a killer.

Despite constant care, few adults survive fire trauma.

Orphan joeys are surprisingly more resilient.

There you go, sweetheart.

This is Sandy, who was orphaned when her Mum

needed to be euthanised because she was badly injured.

She got called Sandy 'cause Mum's pouch

had a lot of sand in it.

She was covered in sand when she came out.

Because she's so perfect,

she's been a little bit of respite

amongst all the others that are so badly injured.

She's got the most perfect feet, everyone loves her.

Come on, come and get your milk.

Come on.

Come on, come and get your milk.

For the young orphans, human surrogates

and formula milk offer them a fighting chance.

It's difficult for kangaroos to bounce back from burns.

Infection moves quickly into bones.

That's closed up, but given that that's one of her

major weight-bearing points there,

we'll probably keep bandaging that for a little bit longer.

Keeping this roo on her feet is doubly important.

- This one should still have a little joey.

Only a jellybean.

As months pass, attention shifts

from caring for the injured to taking stock of the loss.

The inferno that tore through the South Endeavour

Conservation Reserve at Bezzant's Lease

burned with such intensity,

it's unclear if anything survived.

Finding hidden signs of life takes detective work...

and camera traps are a perfect tool.

My standardised 50 is just here.

Top of the camera at 50...

Ecologists, Eradani and Sabrina,

from Australian Wildlife Conservancy,

set up cameras with the hope of recording nocturnal species.

- So, we use a general bait

which is contained in a canister.

It's peanut butter, rolled oats, sardines.

It's looking good.

So, it's attractive to both small mammals

- and carnivorous marsupials. - Great.

Even Australians don't often get a chance to see

the amazing diversity of fauna in Australia.

So, using camera traps is a way that we can see

what's out there and find out what they do

in their night time lives.

The high-altitude forests

of the New England Tablelands

are renowned for their biodiversity.

But the inhabitants are secretive,

even in the best of times.

Naturalists, Jasmine and Ritchie,

are searching the lower swamplands.

This requires laying pitfall traps.

I think there's a chance we'll find something.

Not optimistic, but hopeful.

But traps left out overnight

are not revealing any reptiles, or small mammals, either.

- 0 out of 25, not great. - Yeah.

But Jasmine and Ritchie

have one more trick in their tool kit.

- So, I reckon between these two trees.

- Yep. - It'll be blocking the fly way.

Yep.

- Have you got yours lined up? - Yep.

This is a harp trap.

So, it is how we trap microbat species.

- Just like this? - Yep.

Mouse-sized microbats make up one-fifth

of all Australian mammals.

But whether they've survived the blaze is still unknown.

It will take nightfall to find out.

I'll just bring this side.

Oh, my god.

- Oh, yes! - We've got a bat!

- A little bat, good job. - Excellent.

Oh, aren't you lovely?

- Yeah, it's really cute.

Bats go into torpor during the day,

which is a little mini hibernation

that they do to reserve energy.

And they have actually found that bats will wake up

from torpor when they smell smoke.

If the fire came close to him then he would've fled.

Yeah, right.

- Ooh, looks like he's had an injury.

- So, this is an injury is it, this difference in colour?

- Yep, so that's all scar tissue that's healing now.

- Yeah, so I think it has been injured in the fires.

So, him moving his lips there, he's echo-locating.

So, he's trying to figure out what's going on around him.

So, he's getting ready to fly off.

Yeah, it's probably time to let him go.

- Come on, buddy, time to go.

Oh...that was quick.

It's a good sign to find microbats.

It's an indicator the insect biomass is recovering, too.

After several weeks Eridani and Sabrina return.

Today we've come back to collect those traps

and just see what's on them.

Alright, let's have a look,

see what we've got in the last three weeks.

- That's a swampy. - Yep.

Echidna!

- Quoll! - Hey!

That's great.

- Spotted tail quoll. - Oh!

- Oh, he wants in. - Oh.

He really wants in to the bait.

- Give me the bait!

Yeah, it is really exciting to see spotted tailed quolls.

They're a listed threatened species.

Whose ear is that?

- Who's that? - Oh, I don't know.

- Who are you? - What is that?

- Oh, it's a wombat! - It's a wombat!

- Oh, my goodness! - He takes up the whole...

He's enormous!

I mean, that's a really great suite of animals.

It's really encouraging and heartening

to see these animals on camera traps,

but they are still the larger species

that have the ability to find refuge.

The critical part is continuing surveying

to find out if smaller mammals and reptiles are still here.

But the camera trap

has also captured a worrying sign.

- Oh! - Oh, feral cat,

that's not cool.

For animals that have survived,

feral cats are probably one of the biggest problems.

It's known that, particularly feral cats,

will use fire scars to hunt

because their prey items are exposed.

- Another one! - Oh, a different one.

So, there's at least two there.

- And another one. - Yeah.

So, there's quite a few out there.

Cats have spread to 99 percent of Australia,

and kill 1.5 billion native animals every year.

Australia's wild creatures are especially vulnerable

in the barren aftermath,

where there are few places to hide.

In the fire ravaged Barrington Range,

conservationist, Tim Faulkner, helps one of the last

populations of brush-tailed rock wallabies.

For the past six months, we've been providing food,

or food drops to about four known little wallaby hotspots.

Without a doubt, if we hadn't have brought food here,

there would've been at least 10 wallabies

that live on this outcrop that would've perished.

Of the 15 species of rock wallaby in Australia,

most have disappeared from their original range...

due to feral predators and land clearing.

Rock outcrops, like tiny islands,

are where the brush-tailed rock wallaby hangs on.

But the population is teetering.

With 80 percent of rock wallaby habitat being burnt,

it means areas like this are now critical.

You know, when you've got an enclave like this,

that's fragmented and it's here,

it becomes all the more precious.

This forest here as we stand, it's been burnt,

it's regrowing and that looks pretty.

It's a bit of green.

But it is an ecological ghost town,

and it was before the fires.

Its entire mammal suite has disappeared,

other than kangaroos, wombats and species that are too big

for the feral fox or feral cat to eat.

It's lost all of its natives.

Australia has the worst mammal extinction rate on earth.

And over 90 percent of all our extinctions

are related to the introduced feral fox and feral cat.

Let's step back 200 years to this forest right here.

Just within this small area,

let's say the size of half a football field,

we would've had one bandicoot, one bettong,

one potoroo, one small wallaby.

We would've had a predator, like a quoll.

An overlapping Tassie devil 3,000 years ago.

All gone.

Let's drop down another scale.

Native rodents, they're gone.

With that have gone the predators.

There's no tiger snakes.

There's no pythons.

There's no lace monitors.

The whole thing is just in collapse

and I go along here and flip a hundred rocks

and I won't find one small skink,

and there used to be thousands.

So, in an area just the size of half a football field,

the overall biomass of animals that has gone

is just unbelievable, and again, look here now.

It's an empty forest.

With their absence, our whole forest floor

builds up in debris, because there's nothing turning

it over and turning it into soil.

We've lost that.

So, when a fire starts, it's got so much fuel on the ground.

That fuel burns, and the hotter it burns

the higher the fire gets, and then we have canopy fires.

Bringing those marsupials back could play a critical role

in the reduction of fire fuel load.

But bringing them back also has its challenges

because they've gone for a reason

and that's because of the introduced feral fox

and the feral cat.

Tim has made it his life's work

to re-establish populations

of Australia's rare and threatened mammals.

At a secure facility, atop the Barrington Range

an ark of Australian animals is being bred

as insurance populations.

After the fires, the work here is more urgent than ever before.

- Around about there for now.

Hey, Fat Lady.

Amongst the animals being bred for release

are Tasmanian devils,

the largest surviving marsupial carnivore.

- There you go.

Let's have a look.

That's it, big girl.

Good girl.

- You got some? - Look at that.

A peek inside the pouch

- shows tiny joeys developing. - ..one, two, three.

- Good girl. - Oh, look at 'em.

And a little boy and last one is another little boy.

Two boys and a girl.

Good effort, Mum.

That's awesome.

What we'll do is we'll tuck her joeys back in

and then we'll pop her back in her nest box.

- I know, I know.

Righto.

The ark has bred over 450 devils,

with 50 set free in Tasmania.

Hundreds of other animals have been raised

for release in national parks.

But restocking wild populations

depends on creatures having wild places to live.

Australia has been facing the loss of its natural places

and natural things for a very long time.

The fires should act as a big wake up call,

and not just for eastern Australia.

I mean, the catastrophic loss of biodiversity

throughout Australia is very well documented.

If fires have brought that to light,

then let that be the good.

In the forests of Queensland's Darling Downs,

life awakens.

Epicormic shoots are sprouting from tree trunks.

Like lime green feather boas,

they adorn the blackened bodies of the gums.

Storms bring the hope of landscape recovery.

Quenching rains soften the baked soil...

and add the lifegiving ingredient to buried seeds.

It's been almost eight months since the Gospers Mountain blaze

turned the famous Blue Mountains black.

80 percent of this World Heritage area

was razed by the fires.

Today is the first time ornithologists,

Anastasia and Vicky have returned

to their study site in the Jamison Valley.

We're hoping that the birds have survived

and we're hoping to hear a dawn chorus,

'cause it's the middle of winter,

it's their breeding season and they should be starting

to sing right about now.

I think he's over there.

- You see it? - Oh yeah.

Yeah, I do.

- It's just amazing that they're here.

Finding survivors is encouraging...

Oh, it's good to see him.

..but seeing the males perform courtship displays

is the best sign of recovery.

Yeah, so the male superb lyrebird,

he's most famous for his vocal mimicry.

They can mimic a huge range of sounds in the environment.

Mainly other species of bird.

They can mimic a camera shutter, chainsaws,

all sorts of bizarre things.

Last year, we had this great team of excellent biologists,

finding lyrebirds throughout their entire range

of New South Wales, Victoria, ACT, Southern Queensland.

And then at least half of those sites have now gone.

We've looked at the maps, um...

It's incredible.

It's... it's really, really upsetting.

So, we feel that some of the birds that we've recorded

will have perished in the fires,

and perhaps some of the dialects,

some of these different animal cultures

may have become extinct just in, you know,

a few months during these fires.

To see these places, one after each other,

be destroyed, it's devastating.

What has been lost, what is left now?

Have we lost whole animal cultures?

I will say we like heard more singing this morning

than I thought we would,

given what I saw on the fire maps

of how badly this area's been affected.

And so the fact that these males have survived, it's a good sign

that these females have survived as well.

Each breeding season, Vicky checks the nests

of the females in her study sites.

So, along here we have Gertrude.

Her neighbour is Xena, and then the final bird

on the end that we were working with was Queen Victoria.

And we were just in the territory of Diana.

Lyrebirds have shown resilience in the moment of fire.

So, we know that they will go down wombat holes.

We know that they will hide in creek lines.

They're not very good flyers, so when faced with fire,

it's not like they can fly away like another bird.

They've, kind of, just got to hunker down.

Foremost on Vicky's mind

is her favourite bird, Gertrude.

She has checked her nest for the last four years.

So, that's her nest over there.

And I can't see her,

but there's a feather in the nest.

And so, to me that says it's an active nest.

And so, that's a really, really good sign.

But I'm going to have to get closer...to see if she's in it.

Hi, long time no see, sweetheart.

Hello.

And so she's trying to distract me from her location.

So, I'm just going to check if there's an egg in here.

Very gently.

And yep, we have an egg.

So, this cargo is very, very precious,

remembering that they only have one per year.

Pop it back to safety.

I'm just so pleased.

I assumed that all these birds were gone,

and I grieved for them because I didn't think

that they would survive.

Today has been wonderful to give me a bit of hope.

She's looking at me.

Like small mammals

who reduce fuel loads by tilling the soil,

lyrebirds also play a vital role as landscape engineers.

Each bird moves 150 tonnes of soil every year,

more than any other animal on earth.

- Lyrebirds actually help decrease the chance

of really intense fires, because they're helping

with this decomposition of leaves and they're preventing

that kind of build up that can lead to really intense fire.

The forest relies on lyrebirds,

just as they rely on the forest.

It's estimated three billion native vertebrates perished

in Australia's Black Summer fires.

The equivalent of almost half the human

population of the planet.

No other event anywhere in the world,

in living memory, has killed or displaced as many animals.

It's an unfathomable loss of rare and precious wildlife.

Australia's Black Summer fires rank as the worst

wildlife disaster in modern history.

But Australia is just the leading edge

of a new global reality.

Humans are pushing the planet to a new epoch of fire,

it's been dubbed The Pyrocene.

Climate modelling predicts longer,

more dangerous fire seasons for both the southern

and northern hemispheres.

As global temperatures reach cataclysmic new highs,

a hotter, more-fiery planet means intervention

will be increasingly necessary for animals to survive

in a world where the rules have changed.

In the ashes of Namadgi National Park,

in the Australian Capital Territory,

Professor David Lindemeyer

surveys the obliterated landscape.

As a world-renowned fire ecologist,

David has been researching

how the fire seasons are changing.

So, what we're seeing is unprecedented fire.

Places that are burning that should never burn,

such as sub-tropical rainforests,

and places that are burning repeatedly.

No ecosystems are geared to deal with very frequent,

very high-intensity and high severity fires.

And the danger is that that will lead to the collapse

of some ecosystems, and the extinction

of some of the species that are associated

with those environments.

We simply have to tackle issues with climate change.

Climate and weather

are the fundamental drivers of fire.

We have to take part in this global discussion

about what we are going to do to control

carbon emissions, what we are going to do

to store more carbon in the environment,

and what we are going to do to deal with the kinds

of catastrophic events that we've seen.

Climate change is not something far off in la-la land.

It's here and now.

It's a clear and present danger.

Flame robin, right here.

See the male?

There he is.

It's one of the first birds that we start to pick up

in the environment when it's been burnt like this.

He's cross with me because I'm wearing red.

There would have been enormous mortality

of animals in this area.

You know, many populations would have been knocked back

90, 95 percent, maybe even more.

But those residual animals that have survived and can make

a living directly after the fire will be important for recovering

populations in these kinds of areas.

The key thing is that these areas don't burn again

in the next few years.

What we experienced in 2019-20 was a catastrophe in Australia.

But the reality is that many, many other parts of the world

are going to experience these kinds of problems.

We have to work harder to come up

with good solutions in a proactive way.

It's the only way forward.

The platypus rescued early in the summer

is now ready to head home.

Today is such a big day for Buddy.

He has been putting weight and condition on

for the last six months and he is very excited,

by the looks of it, to go out into the wild.

A wet winter has brought rivers back to life.

I'll miss him a lot.

You ready to go?

But it's really, really exciting to be able to let him go.

Feels amazing.

I got a little bit teary there.

He's actually just checking out

where he might make his new home.

There's lots of food around.

Hopefully he'll find a female and start

to repopulate this area.

So, fingers crossed,

we have little Buddies swimming around soon.

Almost one year after the fires,

the Blue Mountains are greening again.

With high hopes, Vicky returns to Gertrude's nest site.

- And so we've come back today to see if that egg

has turned into a chick, hopefully.

Vicky finds the nest and Gertrude, too.

- So, this is a really good sign.

They put their wing up.

It's, kind of, a defensive behaviour,

and I would expect her to only be doing

that if either she still had an egg,

or there was a chick in the nest now.

The stakes are high.

Last year we had a predation rate of about 90 percent,

so most nests didn't survive.

And so it's always a bit nerve-wracking

when you go back to a nest to see

if there is a chick or not,

because there may have been, or you may have missed it,

and not been there in time.

Hopefully there's one in there.

Yes, there is a chick.

There we are!

Look, hello!

You notice it's listening to Mum.

Considering what happened with the fires...

I'm just so stoked to see this little one.

- Beautiful.

I'm always happy to see a lyrebird baby,

but this baby is very special.

There we go.

I didn't even think Gertrude would have survived,

and the fact that she's not only survived,

but she has a beautiful, healthy chick,

I'm just over the moon.

For Australia's precious wildlife to recover,

it will take many years and much human help.

Communities working to regenerate landscapes

and create safe, feral-proof havens

for wildlife will be essential.

As will be the necessity to preserve

fragile habitats and threatened species.

And captive breeding to restock wild populations

will also reduce the risk of extinction

in case of future fires.

Yeah, I think there's a whole range of things

that need to be addressed.

Where are our small mammals?

Who's looking after the forests in a natural way?

Are we correctly managing fire within our parks?

And then we've got the super-beast of climate change.

Which areas can we tackle and which have the real

tangible impact before it's too late?

The fires have brought a real awareness to Australia

and the rest of the world of how fragile we really are.

It's only through work like this

and everybody doing something,

moving it forward, that we will see the change.

We will see healing.