The blanket of smoke that hazed the capital on Wednesday might have affected more than aeroplane passengers and motorists.
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Hazard-reduction burns could fragment habitat and prevent them from finding breeding partners.
This was concluded on Thursday after an 11-year study at the ANU that was the first to specifically examine how fire affects the movement of animals in a continous habitat.
Lead researcher, Dr Annabel Smith from the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society undertook an 11-year study that primarily monitored how lizards and geckos spread after fire.
She found they struggle to move through land and reproduce when large areas of vegetation are burnt at once.
"Our results actually have implications for mammals, and it can give us insights into how animals generally move across landscape," she said.
"We find that some species increase after fire and others decrease, but this new research has gone beyond population abundance and shown why it happens."
Dr Smith said it is more common for numbers to decline than rise after a fire.
She stressed it is crucial for conservation to be a priority of burning projects and has found firefighters are often hungry for information about how fire affects animals.
"You certainly need hazard reduction to protect people's houses and lives," Dr Smith said.
"But the way we burn, we can't meet this goal as well as the conservation of plants and animals."
She said controlled burns around urban areas should be managed to protect people, while the size and shape of burns in nature reserves should be designed to benefit biodiversity.
The next step is to discover which species are impacted in different ways.
For instance, she found a lack of fire actually restricts the knob-tailed gecko's movement.
"After a fire, its population increases," she said.
"If its habitat hasn't burned for 30 years there are almost none."
On Wednesday, flights in and out of Canberra Airport were delayed after fog and smoke from several hazard reduction burns blanketed the capital.
Patchy morning fog and smoke from burns hung around well into the morning, causing widespread visibility issues.
The strategic burns were designed to reduce the fuel loads around the ACT.
