A University of Newcastle research team is investigating how native species survive catastrophic fire.
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The research project has emerged in the aftermath of the Black Summer bushfires, which killed or displaced about 3 billion animals.
Professor Matthew Hayward, a conservation scientist, is leading the research project, Surviving the inferno: how threatened macropods survive catastrophic fire.
"We're looking at how some of Australia's least known wallabies survived the Black Summer fires, and how they live in the face of such a massive disturbance," Professor Hayward said.
The research is targeting the parma wallaby, red-legged pademelon, along with greater gliders, yellow-bellied gliders and large forest owls.
The project, which recently started, involves trapping in the Barrington Tops, Mount Hyland/Chaelundi and Gibraltar Range.
"So far we've struggled to capture parmas and pademelons, but have caught a heap of potoroos and short-eared possums," he said.
"We've seen a couple of our target species, so they are surviving, but at densities so low that they rarely go into our traps."
Species have been observed in the burnt areas, "but those areas are coming back so slowly that many more are seen in the unburnt sites".
"It's too early to tell, but the fact that the species have survived in burnt areas so far offers hope that they will be able to persist," he said.
"The real question is whether they can survive in the longer term, after their numbers were likely knocked down so much by the fires and then predation afterwards."
The 2019-20 fires burnt about 12 million hectares, with about 1.8 million hectares across southeast Australia exposed to "high-severity fires".
"Almost 70 per cent of the parma wallaby's distribution was burnt in these fires," Professor Hayward said.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of threatened species is the global method for determining the likelihood of a species going extinct.
"The red list assessment for the parma wallaby has relied on a 'guestimate' of 5000 individuals since 1996," Professor Hayward said.
This was based on a single study in the 1970s when the parma wallaby - then thought to be extinct - was rediscovered. "It is impossible to manage wildlife [like parma wallabies] for conservation when we know so little about them," he said.
Forest-dependent species like parma wallabies also face NSW's rapid land clearing rates.
"So, things are not looking particularly good for them."
He fears parma wallabies may go extinct, like 32 other Australian mammals since Europeans arrived.
"We live in the most wonderful country in the world, but we are trashing it for short-term gain," he said.
"It would be great if our society recognised this and ensured that our grandkids had the same wonderful environment that we've lived with."
The research involves a team of PhD students, conservation managers and researchers. As well as the Newcastle group, this includes state officials and researchers from Germany.
The target species are being studied in burnt and unburnt areas from the Watagan Mountains in the Hunter, almost to the Queensland border.
Camera traps are set to learn where the species live. Land is traversed to see what habitat they're using.
"We're trapping them to see their condition, stress levels, sex ratio and breeding activity," he said.
Radio transmitters are attached to the animals to "see how they are surviving and using habitat in the aftermath of the fires".
"It's a really field-intensive project that relies heavily on a great partnership."