Mangel and Tier, in their seminal and much ignored 1994 paper, “Four facts every conservation biologist should know about persistence” argued that catastrophic events are implicated in the majority of extinctions. Despite this, and the notable increase in catastrophic events in Australia precipitated by global warming (flood, fire, extreme temperature, storm surge etc.) we seem ill-prepared for such events. In another fundamental conservation theory paper McCarthy et al (2005) showed that, where catastrophic events are expected, we need at least six viable populations of every species to provide an acceptably high likelihood of persistence. In this talk I show how the theory can be turned into practical advice for South Australia’s biodiversity strategy, largely focussed on risk-spreading and assisted migration - https://soe.epa.sa.gov.au/files/documents/Expert-Paper-Biodiversity.pdf.

Intended to be the introductory talk of the symposia: "Using Emergency Interventions during extreme weather to Save Threatened Species".

Australia’s freshwater crayfish are among the most threatened non-
marine invertebrates, with around 38 species listed nationally and more
awaiting assessment. Many species are long-lived (~30-50 years of
age), slow to mature, and highly sensitive to environmental change.
The Critically Endangered Fitzroy Falls Spiny Crayfish, Euastacus
dharawalus, is considered a single, isolated population with a narrow
range (<10km) occurring in the NSW Southern Highlands and evidence
from monitoring indicates its range is in decline. Persistent threats to
freshwater systems such as altered stream flows, competition from
invasive species and riparian degradation are now further compounded
by increasingly frequent climate extremes, including anoxic events,
bushfires, intense rainfall, and flooding. While the majority of
conservation efforts have focussed on assessing taxa and long-term
recovery efforts, the escalating pace and severity of climate events
demand immediate, short-term interventions to prevent local or total
extinction. Drawing on recent intervention actions for
other Euastacus species, as well as long-term monitoring of
E.dharawalus (2016-current), communications with end-users and the
wider community, we explore the potential trigger points, hurdles and
the feasibility of emergency response efforts and rescue strategies to
develop a list of guidelines for a realistic emergency management plan.
Without urgent, required action, the next extreme event could prove
catastrophic for the species.

We explore three important ways in which law can facilitate or hinder emergency interventions.
First, we briefly explain how laws grant power to decision makers to act or constrain particular activities. Ordinary people can do anything that is not prohibited by law but governments cannot act unless given legal power to do so. We ask: ‘do our current laws give governments and public servants the power to act in an emergency, to save biodiversity?’
Second, we step back to examine how extreme events are considered or accommodated in existing laws in Australia. We explain how states and territories are integrating climate change into biodiversity laws, recognising it as a profound challenge for ‘business-as-usual’ conservation approaches. However, we observe that these laws may not be enough as extreme events threaten species and systems with extinction and collapse.
Finally, we bring a legal perspective to the kinds of preventative activities that can reduce the harm of extreme events on biodiversity. For example, existing laws govern the maintenance of fire breaks, use of prescribed fire, and creation of recovery plans and threat abatement plans. In practice, these tools (a) are often not accompanied by the necessary powers or resources to take necessary action (i.e. our first point); or (b) they are not embedded in climate-oriented legal frameworks, that acknowledge the scale and urgency of the problem (i.e., our second point).
We conclude with insights from ongoing reforms around the country, and point to opportunities to improve our laws to better protect biodiversity during emergencies.

As climate change drives more frequent and severe extreme weather events, the social, economic, and environmental consequences are escalating. While investment in resilience-building has increased, it has primarily focused on social and economic aspects, with limited attention given to the role of natural capital in disaster preparedness. Emerging evidence highlights the significant long-term economic benefits of proactively protecting natural capital in the face of disasters.

Recognising the increasing risks to biodiversity and agricultural natural capital, the Australian Government engaged Natural Resource Management (NRM) organisations nationwide to develop regional-scale Emergency Preparedness and Response Plans (EPRPs). Co-designed with local stakeholders, these plans assess disaster risks through the lens of regional climate, ecological, and socio-economic conditions. They identify each region’s most vulnerable natural assets and outline targeted actions to reduce disaster-related impacts on threatened species and ecosystems.

In the Wet Tropics of Far North Queensland, one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, this approach led to the prioritisation of cyclones, floods, and heatwaves over more nationally dominant hazards such as drought and bushfires. The planning process emphasised the urgent need to strengthen existing disaster management frameworks by adopting a holistic, integrated, and long-term approach that places natural capital on equal footing with social and economic considerations.

This symposium will briefly examine how the current framework overlooks the protection of natural capital, thereby undermining the effectiveness of disaster management efforts to mitigate social and economic impacts. The session will explore the opportunities to enhance the existing disaster management framework and how establishing formal, structured decision-making mechanisms can safeguard natural capital and enable effective, scalable, and repeatable responses to disaster events. It will discuss the value of the state-coordinated, locally led model which ensure disaster responses are regionally tailored, grounded in local knowledge, and enabled through strong state-level coordination, advocacy, endorsement, and resourcing.

As the frequency, severity and extent of climate-driven ‘disasters’ increase, protected area/conservation managers are stretched between two priorities – building strategic climate change actions, while responding at a tactical level to large-scale emergencies. The Resist-Direct-Accept framework offers a strong conceptual basis to connect and integrate both priorities while spanning all timeframes.

During the devastating Black Summer bushfires, opportunities arose in Victoria to prevent catastrophic loss of species/critical populations. Some opportunities were realised, others were missed. Successes included:
- Pre-emptive extractions to safe ex situ locations (Eastern Bristlebirds)
- During-event direction of fire control resources to conservation needs (ground+aerial operations in Cape Howe region)
- Immediate post-event interventions to prevent extinctions (extraction of endemic freshwater fishes, mussels and crayfishes before ash/silt inundation)
- Recovery phase large-scale pest and weed control.

Missed opportunities included failure to extract localised endemic and state-significant species (flora, reptiles, amphibians), and limited success in meeting the post-fire needs of surviving species (poor biodiversity data/intel, agility challenges in adjusting scheduled fuel reduction burns, limited protection of unburnt refugia).

The lessons learned significantly informed and improved our agility and outcomes during the recent Gariwerd-Grampians/Little Desert bushfires. Successes included:
- Strong prior knowledge of species, habitats and conservation needs across impacted landscapes
- Prior seed/propagule collection for threatened flora
- Pre-emptive fuel reduction burns as bushfires developed
- During-event awareness and consideration of core conservation assets
- Immediate post-event assessment and emergency feeding of rock wallabies
- River Blackfish translocations to safe farm dams
- Provision of artificial habitats for small mammals
- Malleefowl egg extractions from burnt mounds, to incubators then sanctuaries
- Response+recovery threat control
- Significant response+recovery funding

We present a framework that integrates planning and responses, on both strategic and tactical timeframes, and model examples that may iteratively improve conservation actions at scale for future events.

Prolonged dry periods, heat waves and extreme fire danger weather all pose risks to our threatened fauna, and extreme events can cause long-term changes to their habitat. One of these changes can be the availability of structural habitat required for breeding or denning. This talk discusses the effectiveness of habitat augmentation for the recovery of threatened fauna species on Kangaroo Island after the catastrophic 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires. Habitat augmentation that has been installed since the bushfires includes nest boxes for birds and ground shelters for mammals. We present data on the usage of these artificial structures in a post-fire environment. Nest box use by glossy black-cockatoos increased post-fire compared to pre-fire, and our data suggests this is due to a widespread continuing loss of large hollow bearing trees directly during the fires as well as in the years afterwards. Use of nest boxes by yellow-tailed black-cockatoos remained similar pre- and post-fire, but this could be due to the influence of proximity to pine plantations on nest site selection in this species. Trial installations of smaller nest boxes has shown a rapid uptake by other avian species in burnt habitats. Artificial dens installed for KI dunnarts were visited and entered at much higher rates in burnt sites than unburnt sites, potentially indicating a lack of structural habitat in burnt areas post-fire, despite this species seemingly preferring the post-fire landscape. Southern brown bandicoots, which are known to require structurally complex vegetation, are still predominantly detected in unburnt habitat more than five years post-fire, and trials of bandicoot bunkers are now in progress. Given much of the structural habitat Kangaroo Island fauna depends on takes time to form, more frequent extreme fire events may mean continued human intervention is required to address post-fire structural habitat deficits.

Large fires covering vast areas occur regularly in mallee habitats and threaten malleefowl populations by reducing population size and rendering habitats unsuitable for breeding for 15-20 years. These deleterious effects are exacerbated by the fragmentation of malleefowl habitats due to clearing. Wildfires may eradicate malleefowl from isolated habitat patches, reduce the genetic diversity of surviving populations and increase the risk of inbreeding. These issues are expected to worsen as climate change increases the scale, severity and frequency of wildfires.
Wildfires are hard to control, but their impact on malleefowl conservation can be reduced with appropriate emergency intervention. In particular, we propose translocating eggs from burnt mounds to active mounds in unburnt areas.
Each spring, the national malleefowl monitoring program documents the breeding status of several thousand malleefowl mounds across Australia. In the event of wildfire, this data would identify active mounds that have been burnt and where eggs may be rescued. Eggs are unlikely to be directly affected by fire, but burnt mounds are typically abandoned by the parents, leaving incubation temperatures unregulated and eggs vulnerable. Even if eggs hatch, the likelihood of chicks surviving in a burnt landscape is extremely low.
We propose that potentially hundreds of eggs could be rescued within a few days of fire and translocated to other malleefowl mounds identified in the monitoring program. As well as improving survival of rescued eggs, translocations may greatly benefit receiver populations by restoring genetic connectivity in fragmented landscapes and reducing inbreeding.
We propose an effective emergency fire response for malleefowl is feasible and would benefit the species’ conservation. The main challenge involves preparedness: people need to be trained to safely excavate mounds and translocate eggs, and appropriate permits need to be in place before the fire season, so that eggs can be rescued within days of the fire.

Refugia are places buffered from climate change. As such, they provide sites with a higher chance of persistence for biodiversity under the impacts of climate change. Hence, refugia provide more mesic environments that can facilitate the persistence of species severely impacted by drought-driven dieback. However, catastrophic events pose a threat to populations within refugia. Using a genetically unique population of the red stringybark, Eucalyptus macrorhyncha, as an example, I provide a risk assessment for three potentially catastrophic events: intense fires, prolonged drought, and severe heatwave – including potential approaches to mitigating the risks. Assessing the risk and implementing mitigation measures will reduce the impact of these catastrophic events and increase the probability of persistence for the unique population.