Wildfire and Wildlife

As Columbia Gorge wildfires burn and expand to over 30,000 acres just west of me and smoke fills my town, my first instinct is to check on my child with asthma. Next, I call and offer help to my friends, who live in a wooded area. They are packing their valuables to be ready to evacuate. At night, when everyone else is in bed, I start to worry about the forest creatures.

My mind conjures scenes from Bambi and Watership Down with creatures great and small fleeing forest destruction. I imagine the tiny pikas in their burrows, the ones that I visited this spring along the Historic Columbia River Highway. I remember their echoing yodels. I wonder if they attempt to run or burrow underground.

After a pause, I reign in my imagination and research the effects of fire on wildlife and come across a different mental image- caricatures of animals in formal attire at a party.

“Except under the most extreme conditions of fast-moving fronts, most appeared indifferent to the flames and, like human grazers at a 1950s cocktail party, many continued their foraging activities even in thick smoke,” wrote Mary Ann Franke in 2000 in her book Yellowstone in the Afterglow, Lessons from the Fires.

Although she noted that some animals fled the area, “some animals appeared curious, approaching a fire and watching trees burn; a black bear was seen sticking his paw into the flames of a burning log.” Franke compiled scientists’ research on impacts to wildlife after the Greater Yellowstone fire of 1988. “Although Yellowstone’s wildlife has adapted over thousands of years to fire, helicopters are still an alien presence,” Franke continues. “When a noisy chopper came near ferrying a water bucket or fire crew, elk visibly tensed and sometimes bolted.” It is ironic to think that sometimes an animal could be more frightened of that than a giant forest fire.

[/media-credit] Nesting cavity made by a woodpecker.

While extensive fires cause habitat alterations and displacement, they often don’t directly kill significant numbers of animals, Franke said. After the almost 800,000 acre fire in Yellowstone Park, extensive surveys by foot, horseback, and helicopter located 261 carcasses—246 elk, 9 bison, 4 mule deer, and 2 moose. Even assuming a large under count, the number of carcasses found is much less than the thousands that die during a typical winter.

They found that long-term effects of fire on organisms are complex: some population declined and others expanded. Although moose and snails were the only animals whose population decreased from the 1988 Yellowstone fire, only a few species were thoroughly studied long-term.

Echoing the Yellowstone findings, studies of the 2012 Pole Creek Fire within the Deschutes National Forest (near Sisters, OR) showed that habitat changes from fire influence wildlife more than direct injury and mortality. As you would expect, those with limited mobility are more vulnerable to the flames and smoke inhalation. Animals least affected lived in moist habitats.

Animals adapted to survive the fire regime that characterized their area  prior to humans arriving on the scene and changing the landscape. Fire severity in the Pole Creek Fire was within that area’s historic limits only at higher elevations.  Lower down a century of fire suppression practices resulted in the full destruction of the forest canopy where historically fires would have been less intensive due to more frequent fires.

[/media-credit] Black-backed woodpecker in the Gorge (Washington)

The Columbia Gorge Eagle Creek fire started in September after most bird species are done nesting and juveniles are able to fly away and migrate. Loss of larger, older trees impacts birds that need a closed canopy such as the Northern Spotted Owl, but recent studies show they use intensely burned areas for foraging. Other birds, such as white-headed woodpeckers and secondary cavity nesters such as bluebirds, may benefit from open habitat and dead snags for nesting. The black-backed woodpecker is a Gorge species that needs dead trees and prefers to move into an area after fires to feed on insects.

Big game wildlife, mule deer and elk may eventually benefit from regrowth of vegetation in the newly open areas. Vegetation loss raises stream temperature and results in erosion and degraded water quality for fish and aquatic species. Amphibians are vulnerable to changes increased temperatures and sediment in streams. Raptors may benefit from open habitat and charred ground cover by exposing prey hiding spots.

The list of winners and losers goes on, and effects of micro-habitats are complicated. But I feel more hopeful about the recovery of Gorge wildlife by taking the long view. Some wildlife will benefit from or adjust to changes; others will migrate to new areas. It is an ecological balancing act.

But, I still wonder about the pikas—those cute little rodents that live on talus slopes in the Gorge. During the 2011 Dollar Lake Fire on Mount Hood, fire reached several sites that had been surveyed prior to the fire for American Pika. “Within 2 years, [after the fire] pikas were widely distributed throughout burned areas and did not appear to be physiologically stressed at severely burned sites,” (Varner 2015).

[media-credit name=”Photo Credit USFWS” align=”alignleft” width=”450″][/media-credit]

Hoorah! Some survived the 2011 fire! Perhaps there is hope for the pikas I visited this spring. Different micro-climate conditions, fire intensity, and other factors may result in different levels of resilience of pikas in habitat encompassed by the Eagle Creek Fire. I have hope for the short term. But there are greater problems looming.

While some wildlife perish in wildfires every year, there are no documented cases of fires destroying entire populations or species. On the contrary, there are populations of animals wiped out due to habitat loss and fragmentation and more recently there is mention of severe climate change impacts to wildlife. An August 2017 study on the loss of pikas in Lake Tahoe, California is “among the first accounts of apparently climate-mediated, modern extirpation of a species from an interior portion of its geographic distribution, resulting in habitat fragmentation, and is the largest area yet reported for a modern-era pika extirpation”(Stewart, Wright and Heckman 2017).

But today the sun is finally out and I will breathe a bit of fresh air. Breathe deeply. I still worry for the firefighters on the front lines, the people displaced, the economic impacts to local business, and the birds and wildlife in my yard. I will put out water for the birds. Although the nesting season for birds was over, young juveniles are roaming around trying to figure out how to navigate and find food and shelter. I am concerned for them; I have a teen myself.

Although I do not want to minimize the impacts to our displaced Gorge wildlife due to this fire, one knot in the pit of my stomach has loosened a little bit. I have a little more hope for their long-term recovery and adaptability.

Biologists, volunteers, and citizen scientists will mobilize in the aftermath and record the recovery of native wildlife and plants from this inferno. The information gathered will help direct decisions about how to manage our forests and wildlife populations in the future. After we all recover our homes, lives, and livelihood,  scientists will need  volunteers to help them understand the impacts of this fire on the Gorge’s wildlife. As climate changes increases the frequency and intensity of fires, we must learn how to manage our forests and populations to be more resilient.

[/media-credit] A deer flees the fire, skirting behind Cascade Locks houses.

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