Kate Umbers, a biologist at Western Sydney University who studies the Australian alpine grasshopper, is especially worried about the fate of the nation’s 250,000 insect species, of which only about one-third have been named.

The current fire season is “deeply, deeply troubling — far worse than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life,” she told The New York Times this week. “It’s really quite frightening in an ecological sense.”

But while they have raised alarm about the scale of destruction, in nearly every case, experts cautioned that it was still impossible to know exactly how many animals have died. Many of the estimates grabbing headlines rely on assumptions about existing population sizes and the effect of natural disasters on them. And they do not give credit to animals’ survival instinct. Some experts have cast doubt on the idea that numbers are even helpful at all.

So can you feel sad? Of course. But there is always more to the story.

Will 10,000 camels be killed?

That’s the plan, yes. But it’s not because of the fires.

Officials in Australia drew international headlines this week when they said they planned to cull up to 10,000 feral camels after many of the animals, tormented by the drought and extreme heat, have increasingly emerged out of the arid desert to raid local communities for food and water.