Natural phenomenon
Wildfires or forest fires are a common natural occurrence. They start during the summer months when vegetation dries out. Lighting striking a dried tree is enough to start a blaze. Fanned by the wind, the fire spreads quickly, consuming vast areas of forest. Forest departments and firefighters have a tough job containing the fires and millions are spent and lives lost in extinguishing them.
Animals that live in regions that see frequent forest fires have evolved and adapted to live with it. Animals caught in a forest fire obviously try to escape the flames and break over. Predators seize this golden opportunity to grab a snack. Bears, raccoons, and raptors have been observed hunting down the fleeing animals.
Different species use different strategies to avoid being instantly barbecued. Birds fly away. Mammals run. Amphibians and other small creatures burrow into the ground, hide out in logs, or take cover under rocks. Other animals, including large ones like deer, or take refuge in water bodies.
Bush firefighters in Australia have frequently spotted waves of creepy crawlies rushing ahead of the fire, desperately attempting to outrun the licking tongues of flame.
Smoked out
Some animals die of smoke suffocation or are charred. These are the ones that can’t run fast enough or find suitable shelter. Not all of those creepy crawlies may escape. Young and small animals are particularly at risk and some of their strategies for escape might literally backfire. For example, a koala’s natural instinct is to crawl up into a tree and it ends up trapped.
Deep down
The heat can kill even organisms buried deep in the ground, such as fungi. Jane Smith, a mycologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Corvallis, Oregon, has measured temperatures as high as 700°C beneath in a wildfire, and 100°C a full 5 cm below the surface.
Scientists don’t know the exact number of animals that die in wildfires each year. However, there are also no documented cases of wildfires – even the really bad ones – wiping out entire populations or species.
Rising from the ashes
Landscapes burned in a wildfire don’t die. They just transform into a new habitat. This can also mean new opportunities. In some places, woodpeckers will fly in and feast on bark beetles in dead and dying trees. Black fire beetles lay their eggs only to burned-out trees since there is no sap or resin to trap the larvae when they emerge.
A disturbance like a wildfire lets an old forest be reborn. A fire sparks many changes, as plants, microbes, fungi, and other organisms re-colonize the burned land.
Water bodies in a burned area can also change. Fish may temporarily move away. There can be a short-term dying out among aquatic invertebrates, which can affect the land animals that eat them.
Woodland and grassland animals (and plants) have lived with a cycle of fire and re-growth for ages. Many species actually require fire to regenerate. Heat from the flames can stimulate some fungi, like morel mushrooms, to release spores. Certain plants will produce seeds only after a blaze.
Good or bad?
Over the past century, wildfires have often been put out quickly or prevented because they damage human habitation.
That’s led to fewer species of those trees and plants that grow only in the years after a fire. It’s also caused a fall in some animal species that depend on post-fire habitat. The Kirtland’s warbler is a small American songbird that nests only in young jack pine forests. The pine comes only release their seeds in a fire. Without fire, much of the bird’s nesting habitat has disappeared.
Picture Credit : Google