The 2019-20 bushfires had severe impacts on many animal species. Some of these species were considered threatened prior to the fires, and as a consequence of the fires may have lost a substantial proportion of their remaining population and habitat. For other species, not previously considered threatened, substantial reductions in population size and habitat may lead to their reassessment as threatened. As a result of the fires, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment rapidly developed a draft framework to evaluate and prioritise emergency action for all vertebrate species whose distributions were substantially fire-affected (Legge et al., 2020).