Have you ever noticed the birdsong you used to wake up to as a child has been thinning? Such has been the case in Australia for the endangered eastern bristlebird, with its numbers declining greatly in the past 40 years. At first glance, there is nothing too unique about the eastern bristlebird. Its song, while beautiful, doesn't stand out in a typical Australian forest. Since the 1980s, researchers have been trying to understand why the eastern bristlebird has seen such rapid decline. Time and again, fires taking place unexpectedly come up as the main factor—along with the increase in fire frequency, climate change and habitat loss. Fire can be deadly for many wild animals, but there is something special about the bristlebird that makes it particularly vulnerable (脆弱的) to large, frequent fires. Eastern bristle birds, despite being able to fly, appear not to appreciate the view of a top story. They don't choose to live in the treetops, or even on lower branches of trees. They preferred low, thick vegetation (植被). This habitat structure is important for many small animals even less noticeable than the bristlebird, such as spiders, beetles and worms. This means the bristlebird can act like an reminder how the entire understory ecosystem is doing. Unfortunately, low, dense vegetation is often the first to burn and disappear during a fire. Worse still, it takes years for an understory to recover fully.
The eastern bristlebird may only be one fire away from extinction, signaling a possible collapse of their ground-level ecosystem. However, all hope was not lost as this knowledge had led to emergency rescues of bristlebirds. And translocation programs, which has been an important strategy for saving almost every vulnerable native Australian species, are in place for this little ordinary bird.
