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Flames of Extinction: The Race to Save Australia's Threatened Wildlife
In the early months of 2020, the world’s attention was riveted on Australia, where the nation’s iconic wildlife fought for survival in the face of unprecedented wildfires. Images of koalas drinking from firefighters’ water bottles went viral and became the global face of a catastrophe that would kill as many as three billion animals. Known as the Black Summer, the fire season was responsible for more wildlife deaths and near-extinctions than any other single event in Australian history. Flames of Extinction , written by a journalist at the heart of this news coverage, is the first book to tell the stories of Australia’s record-setting fires, focusing on the wild animals and plants that will be forever changed.
As news of the fires spread around the world, journalist John Pickrell was inundated with requests for articles about the danger to Australia’s wildlife. The picture seemed grim, from charred koalas to flames that burned so hot not even animal skeletons remained. But Pickrell’s reporting exposed a larger picture of hope. Flames of Extinction tells the story of the scientists, wildlife rehabilitators, and community members who came together to save wildlife and protect them in the future.
As climate change intensifies and devastating wildfires become more commonplace, Australia’s Black Summer offers a poignant warning to the rest of the world. Through evocative and urgent storytelling, Flames of Extinction puts readers on the ground to witness the aftermath of one of Australia’s greatest tragedies and inside the inspiring effort to save lives.
As news of the fires spread around the world, journalist John Pickrell was inundated with requests for articles about the danger to Australia’s wildlife. The picture seemed grim, from charred koalas to flames that burned so hot not even animal skeletons remained. But Pickrell’s reporting exposed a larger picture of hope. Flames of Extinction tells the story of the scientists, wildlife rehabilitators, and community members who came together to save wildlife and protect them in the future.
As climate change intensifies and devastating wildfires become more commonplace, Australia’s Black Summer offers a poignant warning to the rest of the world. Through evocative and urgent storytelling, Flames of Extinction puts readers on the ground to witness the aftermath of one of Australia’s greatest tragedies and inside the inspiring effort to save lives.
- GenresNonfictionAnimals
296 pages, Hardcover
Published April 15, 2021
6 people are currently reading
50 people want to read
About the author
John Pickrell
9 books21 followersJohn Pickrell is an award-winning journalist and the editor of Australian Geographic magazine. He has worked in London, Washington DC and Sydney for publications including New Scientist, Science, Science News and Cosmos. John’s articles can also be found online and in print at BBC Wildlife, National Geographic, Scientific American and the ABC. He has been a finalist in the Australian Museum’s Eureka prizes three times, won an Earth Journalism Award and featured in The Best Australian Science Writing anthology in 2011 and 2014. John studied biology at Imperial College in the UK and has a Master of Science in taxonomy and biodiversity from London’s Natural History Museum.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 10, 2021
This book is full of data from the wildfire in Australia 2019/2020 covering C02 emissions, biodiversity loss of plants, animals, and huge loss of land. The data is horrible but the book also covers many hopefully stories.
Australia has recurring wildfires but this one was far the biggest one in Australia's history. The wildfire was responsible for more wildlife deaths and near-extinction than any other single event in Australian history. John was a guest on my podcast Inside Ideas where we speak about the book and climate change. You find episode 102 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_Bgy...
Or check out any of the links below:
https://medium.com/inside-ideas/john-...
Australia has recurring wildfires but this one was far the biggest one in Australia's history. The wildfire was responsible for more wildlife deaths and near-extinction than any other single event in Australian history. John was a guest on my podcast Inside Ideas where we speak about the book and climate change. You find episode 102 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_Bgy...
Or check out any of the links below:
https://medium.com/inside-ideas/john-...
June 20, 2022
Devastating wildfires in Australia are recognized with designations such as Black Friday (1939), Ash Wednesday (1983), and Black Saturday (2009). But the wildfires of 2019-20 persisted so long they were named for an entire season: Black Summer. Climate change was largely responsible for setting the stage for the catastrophe. The year 2019 was both Australia’s hottest and driest year on record and included six of the continent’s hottest days ever. During the conflagrations, at least one-fifth of Australia’s forest cover burned, a figure unprecedented on any other continent. Most of the fires were in the forested temperate southeastern states of New South Wales, southeastern Queensland, and eastern Victoria. However, fires also overwhelmed Kangaroo Island off South Australia, remote grasslands in the Northern Territory, and woodlands in Western Australia.
An estimated 327 plants and animals lost at least 10 percent of their habitat to the fires. Of these threatened species, 114 suffered staggering losses to their ranges. Among the reasons the Black Summer fires were so devastating to threatened species was that they destroyed huge portions of conservation areas. The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area and the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area lost 54 percent and 80 percent, respectively, of the acreage protected in parks and preserves.
In February 2020, soon after the fires were contained by firefighters or extinguished by heavy rainfall, Australian journalist and award-winning science writer John Pickrell traveled to the burned areas to document the impacts by interviewing over 80 research scientists, natural area stewards, Aboriginal rangers, wildlife rehabilitators, and restorationists familiar with the affected ecosystems. His work, and that of some of the recovery experts he consulted, was delayed by COVID-19 travel restrictions. In the end, though, his persistence led to this detailed and affecting account of Black Summer.
Each of the book’s 11 chapters explores the fires’ effects on an endangered species. However, Pickrell uses these individual species as a springboard to examine the much broader range of challenges imperiling the continent’s threatened flora and fauna even before the wildfires. For example, in the sixth chapter, Pickrell profiles the iconic duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) as well as other species that share the platypus’s aquatic habitat. Platypus populations, previously decimated by the fur trade, were already under duress because riparian land clearing exposes streams to sunlight, which raises water temperatures above thresholds the monotreme can tolerate. Grazing cattle trample stream bluffs, eliminating burrowing sites. Agricultural runoff leads to eutrophication, fouling the habitat for fish, crayfish, mussels and turtles as well as platypuses. Drought, irrigation diversions, and dams reduce the size of streams, or dry them up altogether; platypuses are ungainly on land and are unlikely to be able to migrate to alternate habitat. Platypuses drown after becoming entangled in fishing line or getting caught in crayfish traps. And, even if platypuses escape the direct effects of fire by retreating to burrows or diving underwater, soil, ash and burned debris wash into streams following fires, further degrading habitat.
Pickrell’s profiles include four other mammals (koalas, lemuroid ringtail possums, bare-nosed wombats, and northern quolls), three birds (“firehawks” [several raptors that use fire to their advantage], regent honeyeaters, and glossy black-cockatoos), and three trees (Nightcap oaks, Wollemi pines, and mountain ashes).
Pickrell’s format allows him to highlight the effects of the fires on individual species. As a result, each of the chapters stands alone as a discussion of the effects of fires on distinct species, and on the landscapes and ecosystems they inhabit. On the other hand, the self-contained nature of each chapter means that much information about the fires’ impacts is repeated frequently and redundantly throughout the book.
This volume was originally published in Australia for a distinctly Australian audience; the American edition that I reviewed was published by Island Press, but little if anything was changed from the original. Pickrell uses quite a few Australian terms with which I was unfamiliar and had to research on the internet. A glossary in an appendix would have been helpful. Except for platypuses and koalas, the other mammals, birds and plants likely will be completely unfamiliar to most American readers. The first page of each new chapter is accompanied by a black-and-white icon of the featured species, but photographs of the organisms would have been useful. Perhaps most importantly, the two spare and largely featureless maps in the preface are wholly inadequate to orient readers who are not intimately familiar with Australian geography. Even the map that focuses on the most heavily burned area contains only a modicum of information. Maps showing detailed geographic and topographic features, especially parks and preserves, and preferably including an overlay of burned areas, should have accompanied each chapter and would have been a valuable addition to help readers better appreciate the full extent of the tragedy.
Pickrell traveled to the burned areas soon after it was safe to enter the fire scars and he does document some signs of regeneration and renewal, but the long-term prospects for recovery in many of the ecosystems is uncertain and the successional trajectories remain unclear.
Despite these shortcomings, Pickrell is a talented writer who presents his findings in an accessible and engaging style. He does an admirable balancing act of recounting heart-rending loss, miraculous survival, and heroic rescue. The book easily could have been unremittingly depressing—after all, experts estimate that three billion larger animals may have perished during the fires. Upon finishing the book, though, the reader is left with a sense of hope and an appreciation for the valor and dogged persistence of firefighters, wildlife rehabilitators, and restoration practitioners. Natural area professionals who are viscerally committed to the protection and stewardship of the conserved lands with which they have been entrusted will recognize the profound heartbreak and enduring hopefulness of their Australian colleagues portrayed in this book.
An estimated 327 plants and animals lost at least 10 percent of their habitat to the fires. Of these threatened species, 114 suffered staggering losses to their ranges. Among the reasons the Black Summer fires were so devastating to threatened species was that they destroyed huge portions of conservation areas. The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area and the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area lost 54 percent and 80 percent, respectively, of the acreage protected in parks and preserves.
In February 2020, soon after the fires were contained by firefighters or extinguished by heavy rainfall, Australian journalist and award-winning science writer John Pickrell traveled to the burned areas to document the impacts by interviewing over 80 research scientists, natural area stewards, Aboriginal rangers, wildlife rehabilitators, and restorationists familiar with the affected ecosystems. His work, and that of some of the recovery experts he consulted, was delayed by COVID-19 travel restrictions. In the end, though, his persistence led to this detailed and affecting account of Black Summer.
Each of the book’s 11 chapters explores the fires’ effects on an endangered species. However, Pickrell uses these individual species as a springboard to examine the much broader range of challenges imperiling the continent’s threatened flora and fauna even before the wildfires. For example, in the sixth chapter, Pickrell profiles the iconic duck-billed platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) as well as other species that share the platypus’s aquatic habitat. Platypus populations, previously decimated by the fur trade, were already under duress because riparian land clearing exposes streams to sunlight, which raises water temperatures above thresholds the monotreme can tolerate. Grazing cattle trample stream bluffs, eliminating burrowing sites. Agricultural runoff leads to eutrophication, fouling the habitat for fish, crayfish, mussels and turtles as well as platypuses. Drought, irrigation diversions, and dams reduce the size of streams, or dry them up altogether; platypuses are ungainly on land and are unlikely to be able to migrate to alternate habitat. Platypuses drown after becoming entangled in fishing line or getting caught in crayfish traps. And, even if platypuses escape the direct effects of fire by retreating to burrows or diving underwater, soil, ash and burned debris wash into streams following fires, further degrading habitat.
Pickrell’s profiles include four other mammals (koalas, lemuroid ringtail possums, bare-nosed wombats, and northern quolls), three birds (“firehawks” [several raptors that use fire to their advantage], regent honeyeaters, and glossy black-cockatoos), and three trees (Nightcap oaks, Wollemi pines, and mountain ashes).
Pickrell’s format allows him to highlight the effects of the fires on individual species. As a result, each of the chapters stands alone as a discussion of the effects of fires on distinct species, and on the landscapes and ecosystems they inhabit. On the other hand, the self-contained nature of each chapter means that much information about the fires’ impacts is repeated frequently and redundantly throughout the book.
This volume was originally published in Australia for a distinctly Australian audience; the American edition that I reviewed was published by Island Press, but little if anything was changed from the original. Pickrell uses quite a few Australian terms with which I was unfamiliar and had to research on the internet. A glossary in an appendix would have been helpful. Except for platypuses and koalas, the other mammals, birds and plants likely will be completely unfamiliar to most American readers. The first page of each new chapter is accompanied by a black-and-white icon of the featured species, but photographs of the organisms would have been useful. Perhaps most importantly, the two spare and largely featureless maps in the preface are wholly inadequate to orient readers who are not intimately familiar with Australian geography. Even the map that focuses on the most heavily burned area contains only a modicum of information. Maps showing detailed geographic and topographic features, especially parks and preserves, and preferably including an overlay of burned areas, should have accompanied each chapter and would have been a valuable addition to help readers better appreciate the full extent of the tragedy.
Pickrell traveled to the burned areas soon after it was safe to enter the fire scars and he does document some signs of regeneration and renewal, but the long-term prospects for recovery in many of the ecosystems is uncertain and the successional trajectories remain unclear.
Despite these shortcomings, Pickrell is a talented writer who presents his findings in an accessible and engaging style. He does an admirable balancing act of recounting heart-rending loss, miraculous survival, and heroic rescue. The book easily could have been unremittingly depressing—after all, experts estimate that three billion larger animals may have perished during the fires. Upon finishing the book, though, the reader is left with a sense of hope and an appreciation for the valor and dogged persistence of firefighters, wildlife rehabilitators, and restoration practitioners. Natural area professionals who are viscerally committed to the protection and stewardship of the conserved lands with which they have been entrusted will recognize the profound heartbreak and enduring hopefulness of their Australian colleagues portrayed in this book.
June 17, 2021
Only now, with time and distance, have I been ready to take a longer look at what happened to Australia’s ecosystems in the bushfire season that has become known as the Black Summer. It is, as John Pickrell writes in his intro to this urgent account, a surprisingly hopeful story. But first there are the sheer numbers. Eleven million hectares. Three billion animals (that’s just the birds, mammals and reptiles). Seven billion trees (slightly less than one for each of us). Twenty one per cent of Australia’s forest cover. More than half of the ancient Gondwanan rainforests, 80 per cent of the Blue Mountains. Six-hundred-and-fifty to 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. Previously I had digested these numbers piecemeal; it is a lot to read about them one after the other. Read more on my blog.
June 13, 2022
I applaud Pickrell for his huge effort to maintain a balance in his writing. This book could have been full of devastation and horror and tragedy, but somehow he managed to highlight instances of humanity, hope and useful actions for the future. Granted, this book was incredibly hard to read due to its content, however Pickrells writing did ease that. Necessary book for all Australians in the aftermath of the Black Summer bushfires, but it is hugely upsetting.
March 26, 2023
4.5 stars
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews