Extract from ABC News
Flooding has wreaked havoc in parts of outback South Australia, but there may be a silver, or perhaps green, lining to come from it all: an explosion of flora and fauna.
Key points:
- Usually parched and arid areas are now teeming with life, including with species not usually seen at this time of year
- Ecologists believe the effects will not evaporate as quickly as they appeared
- They expect the landscape to stay rejuvenated for months
Vast stretches of the usually dry outback have been inundated with record rainfall, breathing new life into plants and wildlife that have been dormant.
"Everything that can move, does move," David Watson, a professor in ecology at Charles Sturt University, told ABC News Channel.
"[The plants and animals] can sit there through pretty grim times and then, when conditions are right, when it's wet and warm, they go bananas.
Professor Watson said frogs, bats and ducks were among the wildlife that had been revitalised.
"The frogs that have been waiting in deep, deep burrows in the mud — the water reaches down to them [and] they spring to life," he said.
The intense rainfall began about two weeks ago, with various downpours since, flooding roads and highways.
Katy Hayes and her family have noticed an increase in bird and insect life around their homestead at Arckaringa Cattle Station, 90 kilometres south-west of Oodnadatta.
The station received more than 200 millimetres of rain over the past two weeks.
Director of the centre for ecosystem science at UNSW, Richard Kingsford, said new life emerged immediately after the rain.
He said insects and crustaceans almost straight away hatched out of eggs that have been sitting there since the last flood.
"A lot of them have been buried, ready for something to happen," Professor Kingsford said.
With wildlife, comes more wildlife.
"It attracts this incredible food web of herbivores, invertebrate feeding birds, and you've got the predators, the hawks and eagles, and big fish that are eating little fish so it's an amazing landscape," Professor Kingsford said.
In some parts of the state, water levels are already falling but, Professor Kingsford said, the greenery will stick around longer, with plants still set to flower.
"You get this absolute blanket of different-coloured flowers across the desert, which will be particularly spectacular, probably this spring," he said.
University of Adelaide ecologist John Read, who lives east of Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula, said aquatic animals, such as shield and clam shrimp, were turning up in water holes.
"You don't see them in dry times," he said.
Experts such as Dr Read have also predicted baby animals, including kangaroos, will be on their way.
Professor Kingsford said one of the most impressive sights in flooded inland Australia was often the thousands of budgies that flock to the water.
"They're just magic," he told ABC Radio's This Week with Linda Mottram.
"They have this amazing capability of knowing when it's on … and being able to find where the good times are happening in the deserts."
Dr Read said that, while the matter of how the birds do it remains a mystery, they are able to navigate thousands of kilometres to end up near water.
"They time their arrival just perfectly to take advantage of food resources in lakes or swamps," he said.
But the floodwaters bring a potential downside too, with weeds and invasive species set to cause problems.
"We're concerned about buffel grass, which is a really dangerous invasive grass that [covers] the environment and causes big fires," Dr Read said.
He also cautioned that feral cats and foxes would make their way to where rabbits and mice have been breeding, causing problems over the next year or so, too.
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