The Great Drying and How We Can Help
“Torrential rain swept across Australia's east coast over the weekend after years of drought — putting out two of the biggest and longest-burning bushfires in the country’s populous region of New South Wales.”
photo credit: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images
What do we really know about these wildfires and how this cycle of drought and deluge might be connected to deforestation and climate change? Here are some important facts about wildfires, deforestation, and climate change, which all have an impact on the homes and habitats of many people and animals.
According to National Geographic:
Some of the forests razed in Australia this year have experienced four bushfires in the past 25 years, meaning they’ve had no chance to recover
They should be burning no more than every 75 to 125 years, so that’s an extraordinary change to fire regimes
Mountain ash need to be about 15 to 30 years old before they can produce viable amounts of seed to replace themselves following fire
The loss of these dominant trees is a significant problem, since they provide vital habitat for threatened animal species such as the sooty owl, the giant burrowing frog, and a fluffy arboreal marsupial called the greater glider
As the world warms with climate change, the situation in Australia reflects what’s happening in forests globally—from California and Canada to Brazil and Borneo
Even forests made up of species that thrive on cycles of fire and regrowth are losing resilience in the face of wildfires that are escalating in frequency, severity, and extent
Over the past 40 years, the length of fire seasons has increased by 20 percent across more than a quarter of the world’s vegetated land surface
They call this phenomena "The Great Drying."
So what's the solution?
Well, for tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal people in Australia effectively prevented large blazes by reducing fuel, such as dry grasses and leaf litter, with frequent, small, hand-set burns.
Now there are increasing calls for a return to that kind of traditional burning.
What do you think?
An immediate way to help is by donating to assist in the rescue and recovery of animals caught in the Australian fires and other areas around the world that are impacted by destructive human activities.
Perhaps to save us we must change us!💪🏼💚🌏 Pledge here to learn more.
