NPR

Fires Where They Are 'Not Supposed To Happen' In Australia's Ancient Rainforest

Australia's unprecedented fire season scorched sections of rare, ancient rainforests. It's another signal that climate change is intensifying and expanding wildfires globally.
Even some of the darkest, wettest parts of the Australian landscape burned during the country's fire season. The incursion of fire into these damp refuges alarms ecologists like Mark Graham.

Nestled in the mountains of eastern Australia are fragments of an ancient world. Damp, dark and lush, they are some of the oldest ecosystems on Earth: temperate rainforests that have persisted since the days of supercontinents and dinosaurs.

The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia — and the hundreds of rare species that call them home — are the ultimate survivors, clinging to wet, wild patches of a continent that's increasingly developed and dry.

But even these forests could not escape the country's unprecedented fire season unscathed.

Don't see the graphic above? Click here.

Standing barefoot in a shallow stream in Australia's New England National Park, ecologist Mark Graham reaches down and grabs a charred piece of wood that's washed up

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