The Quenda: A Bandicoot Wildfire Warrior
By Daniel Castro
Scientists may have unmasked an unlikely hero of wildfire prevention in Australia: a medium-sized, rat-like marsupial known as the quenda. In their paper “Bioturbation by a reintroduced digging mammal reduces fuel loads in an urban reserve,” a group of scientists, C. M. Ryan, R. J. Hobbs , and L. E. Valentine (2019), conducted an experiment to understand the potential role of the quenda in preventing the occurrence and/or spreading of wildfires. Being a digging animal, this species has been observed to reduce buildup of “surface fuel” (dry twigs, bark, leaves, etc.), likely helping to slow or even prevent the spread of fire. Although a natural occurrence, wildfires in recent years have become an even bigger threat worldwide due to increasing global temperatures, changing rain patterns that lead to drought (also due to global warming), and poor fire management in natural areas that allows for fuel buildup (especially near cities and other urban areas). Thus, in a world increasingly threatened by fire, conservation efforts aimed at protecting the humble quenda and animals like it may be an indisputably worthy cause.
What in the World is a Quenda?
The quenda is a nocturnal, medium-sized marsupial bandicoot from Western Australia who fights fire by simply digging for its food; foraging for fungus, roots, worms, beetles, and other invertebrates. By doing so, researchers have observed that it reduces fuel buildup and fuel surface coverage (both contribute to wildfire spread) by making holes in the ground and by mixing/covering surrounding vegetation with soil. Because of their suspected role in regulating wildfire, quenda are regarded as “ecosystem engineers.” Despite the observed services they provide, the quenda has been largely driven to low population sizes in much of its range due to habitat destruction by humans, and the introduction of foxes and cats which prey on quenda.
A Simple but Revealing Experiment
In Perth, Western Australia a simple experiment was performed to find out what role, if any, the quenda moving in have on wildfire moving out. On a dry plot of shrubby land where quenda had recently been reintroduced in a conservation effort, researchers prepared some study plots and set up fences around half to prevent quenda from accessing them. Over a few years, the researchers measured changes in both fuel buildup (total mass) and fuel cover (percent of bare ground covered by fuel) of the two plot types. They found that, over a span of just a few years, plots with quenda activity had half of the fuel mass and fuel cover as the fenced plots! Using a fire behavior model that predicts the rates of wildfire spread given fuel amount and distribution, researchers found that fire would move 1.8 faster in the fenced plots than in the ones where quenda dug.
Due to the insight of this study, the quenda and other digging/burrowing animals like it are now being eyed as a potential tools for fighting wildfires. Yet, despite the demonstrated benefits of keeping animals like this around, a vast number of their populations in Australia and around the world are weakening and disappearing altogether. In Australia, the mammal species extinction rate is the highest in the world. This is not only concerning in an animal conservation sense, but also because because Australia has been a recurring and even current victim to the terrors of wildfires. Beginning in September 2019, a months-long bushfire began, scorching over 27 million acres of land, killing millions of animals and about 29 people, as well as destroying thousands of people’s homes (Resnick et al., 2020). For all we know, the role of population declines and extinctions in species like the quenda may have had a hand in facilitating this very fire, or at least its scope.
So What Now?
Even with all that has just been said and all that is occurring, it is not all doom and darkness as the quenda is currently doing well on its road to population recovery, perhaps working on saving the world as you read this.
Although the very animals that help prevent wildfires may be facing declines or extinction at the hands of humans, more so we are becoming aware of the hidden, but critical, services that even the most unsuspected species provide. The value of biological diversity in this sense is just one of many signals of the importance of conserving such “ecosystem engineers.”
However, too often in history has it been the case that we don’t consider the consequences of our collective actions until it is too late to reverse them. Today we live in a time when climate change, poor maintenance of natural lands, and the driving down of ecosystem engineers are all contributing to the frequency and intensity of wildfires. Changes in all of these aspects is necessary; climate change needs to be brought to a halt, lands need to be maintained so that they don’t accumulate fuel (especially near urban areas where such efforts are neglected), and we need to limit species extinctions. We cannot rely purely on the discovery of one ecosystem engineer at a time to help us deal with the word’s problems, but perhaps instead seek to prevent risking their existence in the first place. Sticking up for biological diversity in the name of their benefits to us and the world sounds like a fair bargain. Also, isn’t the quenda pretty darn cute?
Works Cited
Resnick, B., Irfan, U., & Samuel, S. (2020, January 22). 8 things everyone should know about Australia’s wildfire disaster. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/1/8/21055228/australia-fires-map-animals-koalas-wildlife-smoke-donate
Ryan, C. M., R. J. Hobbs, and L. E. Valentine. 2019. Bioturbation by a reintroduced digging mammal reduces fuel loads in an urban reserve. Ecological Applications 00(00):e02018. 10.1002/eap.2018
