Nearly 3 billion Animals affected due to Australia bushfires: Study
Sydney: Nearly three billion animals were killed or displaced by Australia's unprecedented 2019-20 wildfires in "one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history", according to a report released Tuesday.
The study by scientists from several Australian universities said the wildlife hit included 143 million mammals, 2.46 billion reptiles, 180 million birds, and 51 million frogs.
While the report did not say how many animals died because of the fires, the prospects for those that escaped the flames "were probably not great" due to a lack of food, shelter, and protection from predators, said Chris Dickman, one of its authors.
The fires ravaged more than 115,000 square kilometers (44,000 square miles) of drought-stricken bushland and forest across Australia in late 2019 and early 2020, killing more than 30 people and destroying thousands of homes.
It was the broadest and most prolonged bushfire season in modern Australian history, with scientists attributing the severity of the crisis to the impacts of climate change.
An earlier study in January estimated the fires had killed a billion animals in the hardest-hit eastern states of New South Wales and Victoria. But the survey released Tuesday was the first to cover fire zones across the continent, said lead scientist Lily van Eeden of the University of Sydney.
Results from the survey were still being processed, with a final report due to be released late next month, but the authors said the number of three billion animals affected was unlikely to change.
"The interim findings are shocking," said Dermot O'Gorman, CEO of the Australian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature, which commissioned the report.
"It's hard to think of another event anywhere in the world in living memory that has killed or displaced that many animals," he said.
"This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history."
The plight of Australia's popular koalas during the fires garnered international media attention, with thousands of the tree-dwelling marsupials believed to have perished.
But a government report early this year cited 100 other threatened native plant and animal species that had lost more than half their habitat to the blazes, raising the prospect of far greater losses.
Scientists say global warming is lengthening Australia's summers and making them increasingly dangerous, with shorter winters making it more difficult to carry out bushfire prevention work.
The report released Tuesday was drawn up by scientists from the University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, University of Newcastle, Charles Sturt University, and conservation group BirdLife Australia.
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Kolkata Port: Decline in number of voters during SIR brings in uncertainty in TMC bastion
Kolkata (PTI): A sharp decline in the number of voters following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has injected an element of uncertainty into the Kolkata Port Assembly constituency, considered a safe seat for the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).
The electorate in the south Kolkata constituency has dropped from 2.36 lakh in the 2021 Assembly polls to around 1.75 lakh, a fall of nearly 26 per cent, prompting political parties to closely assess its potential impact on the April 29 polling.
The TMC re-nominated senior minister and Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim, who has held the seat for two consecutive terms, while the BJP fielded Rakesh Singh. The Congress nominated Aquib Gulzar, and the CPI(M) put up Faiyaz Ahmad Khan, making it a four-cornered contest.
Kolkata Port, part of the Kolkata Dakshin parliamentary constituency, comprises dock areas, old business districts and densely populated neighbourhoods. Muslim voters form a significant segment of the electorate, alongside traders, transport workers and working-class Hindu families.
The reduction in voter numbers has prompted party workers across formations to scrutinise the revised rolls booth-wise to identify deletions and assess whether specific localities have been affected.
Singh’s candidature has added a twist to the contest. He had earlier contested against Hakim as a Congress candidate but is now in the fray on a BJP ticket.
Hakim won the seat in 2016 by 26,548 votes, defeating Singh, and increased his margin significantly to 68,554 votes in 2021, polling over one lakh votes.
While the TMC has expressed confidence in retaining the seat, opposition parties have raised concerns over the voter list revision, alleging that names of genuine voters have been removed.
“People here know who has stood by them. Elections are decided by trust,” Hakim told PTI during a campaign event.
Singh claimed several residents had complained about missing names in the rolls, stressing the need for transparency. The CPI(M) nominee also said voters in several areas had raised similar concerns.
The constituency has remained a difficult terrain for the opposition in recent elections.
Civic issues such as sanitation, traffic congestion and declining business activity in traditional markets also feature in the campaign in the constituency, though the revised voter list has emerged as a key talking point.
Polling in the constituency will be held in the second phase on April 29, with counting scheduled for May 4.
