Viewed through the car window on the way to a beachside holiday eastern Australia’s blackened forests appear to be bouncing back strongly one year on from the Black Summer fires. But ecological experts from Griffith and the Australian National University, who are conducting a meta-study into research on last year’s devastating bushfires, warn that despite a break in drought conditions the appearances of recovery can be deceiving. … The drought that preceded the record-breaking blazes was so intense that forests’ capacity to bounce back to health has been greatly reduced. The fires burnt over such a vast range of more than 10 million hectares there were few unburnt refuges from which plants and animals can emerge to repopulate the fire grounds. Logging has also taken a toll, by reducing the overall condition of the forest estate, removing the ecologically significant large trees and disrupting old growth forest.