Casey Kirchoff, University of New South Wales Centre for Ecosystem Science

Over 46,000,000 acres burnt across Australia in the recent 2019-2020 bushfires. Over one billion animals are estimated to have perished, seven billion trees burnt, and 2,700 homes lost (including my own), in the fires that raged for nearly seven months. To help understand if, where, and how, the environment recovers from this unprecedented fire season, colleagues from the Centre for Ecosystem Science at the University of New South Wales and I have launched a citizen science initiative—the Environment Recovery Project—on the global biodiversity platform iNaturalist.

There has been a high level of public interest in and personal contribution to bushfire recovery efforts. Some well-intentioned forms of help may prove to be more of a hindrance, such as overzealous wildlife feeding. Activities such as guided weed removal, and casual biodiversity monitoring by citizen scientists will be beneficial, both in aiding the recovery of native species, and helping ecologists understand the post-fire environment.

Recording observations of plants resprouting in bushfire affected areas in The Environment Recovery Project can help improve our understanding of how plants recover from bush fires. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Given the enormity of the firegrounds, citizen scientists will play a crucial role in helping scientists monitor biodiversity in bushfire impacted areas. In just over one month since launching, over 540 people have joined the Environment Recovery Project, submitting over 2,600 observations from nearly 600 species around Australia. The more observations we can collect, the more we will know about the impact of the fires on our environment—particularly in the major bushfire affected areas of Kangaroo Island, and southeastern Australia right up to Queensland.

Anyone in fire-affected areas of Australia can participate, no matter their scientific knowledge or camera skills: all you need to do is download the iNatualist app and join the Environment Recovery Project. If it’s safe to venture into recently burnt bushland, all you need to do is take a photo of a resprouting Eucalyptus, for example, and upload the image to the app. We’re interested in common
species as much as rare species, and hope to capture both native species along with weeds and feral species.

The iNaturalist community has more than 31 million biodiversity records and links to Australia’s leading citizen science platform, Atlas of Living Australia, where everybody from scientists and policy makers to the general public can access a wealth of biodiversity information. The data collected in the Environment Recovery Project is openly available to all members of the project to download, and we encourage ecologists to utilise this resource for research and management purposes.

For more information, contact Casey here, or follow her on Twitter: @gumnut_case.

Read more from the March 2020 ESA Bulletin.

Banner image: Newly unfurled fronds of king ferns (Todea barbara) that have resprouted after the Morton Fire. Credit: Casey Kirchhof.