Thread by @luckytran

Been seeing this headline of "500 million animals killed by the #AustraliaFires" go viral.

Important caveats:
1. This is a rough estimate, not a detailed study
2. It estimates # of animals *affected* by the fires, not necessarily those killed

standard.co.uk/news/world/aus…

I spoke to Australian mammalian ecologist Dr. Chris Dickman who quoted this number & kindly explained his calculation to me.

As with other stories around #AustralianFires, many are missing the nuances of the science, & are exaggerating their headlines.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7…

The calculation was based on earlier work estimating the effects of land clearing in New South Wales. Scientists estimated that the government approved clearing of 640,000 hectares would result in the deaths of 104 million native vertebrates. researchgate.net/publication/31…

To arrive at this number, the researchers assumed that all animals in cleared land would be killed, either directly by the clearing process, or indirectly from the resulting loss of shelter, food and other resources (assumptions cited published research).

So the new number of ~500 million comes from extrapolating that research to the estimated 3 million hectares (!) of land burnt in the #AustraliaFires.

3,000,000Ha/640,000Ha x 104 million animals = 487.5 million animals

Dr. Dickman noted when talking to reporters that not all animals in the burned areas would necessarily be killed by the fires (some would fly off, others would go underground etc), but this was left out of the reporting.

In summary, yes scientists are really worried about the devastating ecological impact the #AustraliaFires are having.

However, media reports are not conveying the full context of the science describing its impact. We need to do better to get the facts right.