The sixth national State of the Environment report detailed the horror of the Black Summer bushfires

The report charts the huge environmental impact of the bushfires of 2019-20 and said that due to climate change "the predicted increase in extreme heatwave events will also lead to increased summer bushfire activity".

The Black Summer fires were "exceptional for the scale, severity and synchrony of fires" across Australia, burning more hectares of land than any other.

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Australia has long been subject to "adverse extreme weather events" but "climate change is changing their frequency and duration", the report read, leaving the door open to a repeat of 2019-20.

Ralf Wilson's property in Batlow was ravaged by the fires and he cannot understand why various governments haven't moved more quickly to combat climate change.

Mr Wilson and his wife Judy up until recently owned Wilgro Orchards where the fires caused huge damage to trees and infrastructure to the tune of $750,000.

Mr Wilson said they only recouped $400,000, while their income dramatically declined over the last two years.

The pair were evacuated to Wagga as the fire tore through their land and thankfully their home was saved, but the impact has been long-lasting and partly contributed to the pair selling up in recent weeks.

The emotional toll of seeing damage to the 20,000 trees they planted and the business they developed over 37 years was taxing.

"It plays on your mind to go out every day seeing burnt trees and equipment and having to clean up and trying to recover from that," Mr Wilson said.

"It had an effect on us and we made our minds up when we had an offer for sale."

Mr Wilson echoed the report's findings and said that he noticed an increase in frequency and severity of bushfires over the four decades he has lived in the region.

He said the idea that another fire would come through Batlow played on his mind.

There were 34 deaths that bushfire season, with 2500 homes destroyed and an estimated 417 additional deaths attributed to bushfire smoke, the report found.

About 80 per cent of Australia was affected by bushfire smoke, making fires the single greatest pressure on Australia's air quality for the first time.

With increased cardiovascular issues and respiratory problems, this translates to a combined health cost of $1.95 billion in economic terms.

Wagga Urban Landcare Group president Edward Maher said the report was "confronting and sobering to digest". Australia leads the world in species loss "which is not the kind reputation we want", he said.

Since the last report in 2016, the number of threatened species has grown by 8 per cent and 200 plant and animal species and 15 ecological communities have been added to the threatened list.

The bushfires will "greatly accelerate" various species decline, Mr Maher said.

The fires burned more than eight million hectares of native vegetation and an estimated one to three billion native animals were killed or displaced.

"Closer to home thousands and thousands of hectares of remaining bushland and vegetation was wiped out at a level of ferocity that gave fauna no opportunity to escape those fires," Mr Maher said.

"For those species that were already teetering on the edge of collapse, with events like that it's pretty clear there would be high casualties for years to come."

Mr Maher said that locally there was cause for optimism. The biodiversity strategy that has been endorsed by Wagga City Council was one, as were targets that have been established for the local government area's emissions reduction towards a net zero target.

"There's an opportunity for all of us to engage in those strategies and targets," he said.

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