They saved the remaining grove of Wollemi Pine, thought to be extinct until it was rediscovered not too many years ago.
The tree losses are immense. It's not just that fire is normal for Australia, its the unprecedented size and ferocity of these fires. Where you may have a 'normal' fire season, the fires may burn a few thousand or hundred thousand hectares...these fires have burned MILLIONS of hectares.
In some areas there are no remaining unburnt areas in proximity for as far as the eye can see, so unless seed has somehow survived the catastrophic heat in some of the fires, regeneration will be a long time coming.
Hving said that however, a friend of mine said she heard a doco of a researcher who has been monitoring an area from the Black Saturday fires, 10 years ago, and where he would have thought there was no comeback, the bush has regenerated...so there is hope.