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Rising from the Ashes
Smokey the Bear said fires were bad, but real bears and other creatures see it differently
John McGehee’s truck rumbles through the hushed Santa Catalina Mountains, up past charred stands of oak, alligator juniper and ponderosa pine. Last summer, these slopes north of Tucson roared with wildfires that burned nearly 85,000 acres. But on this crisp April morning, the dense range is purring back to life. Pockets of green dot the hillsides, and slender young aspens reach upwards from sun-dappled groves.
All of which makes McGehee one happy camper. A wildlife manager with Arizona’s Department of Game and Fish, he once cursed the fires that turned his beloved range to near-cinder. But these days, he’s exhilarated at the changes those flames have wrought: willowy patches of deer and bear grass, fresh aspen in fire-cleared glades, a flurry of deer tracks pocking the dusty road.
The cleansing flames have also made his life easier. Now hungry bears are more likely to be drawn away from campgrounds, into areas where fires have tweaked the habitat and prompted expansion of the bears’ favorite forage—raspberries and canyon grapes.
“I’ve never seen this in all the years I’ve been up here,” McGehee says. “Before, I’m telling you, there wasn’t any good forage on most of this ground. It was all just leaf litter and thick overstory,” such as sun-blocking pine and oak trees. “The change is incredible.”
It’s a point well-taken: Decades of federal forest policies that focused on preventing and fighting fires—think Smokey the Bear—have obscured the fact that flames are often good for wild animals and plants. In places as diverse as Arizona and Florida, Wyoming and Washington, scientists consider wildfires a crucial part of the natural cycle. Many wild creatures—bears, birds and cats among them—have not only learned to adapt to periodic fires, but may even thrive on them.
Among those who hope fire can be viewed in a different light is Mike Bader, a biologist and former director of Alliance for the Wild Rockies. Bader fought the massive 1988 fires in Yellowstone National Park as a ranger. Today, he believes the park’s grizzly bear population has doubled, thanks in part to expanded foraging range. And he knows the flora is flourishing.
“I went back to the park 10 years after the fire,” Bader says, “and I saw new trees that were taller than I am.” Rebounding plant life is a long-term boon to the bears, since a generation of disease-ridden whitebark pines (crucial to bears for their high-protein seeds) have been replaced by healthy young trees.
Similar benefits of burns are seen in fire-affected areas in Washington state, where biologists are monitoring a lynx population numbering from 100 to 200. Last year, more than 80,000 acres of prime lynx habitat in Washington’s Okanogan National Forest went up in flames. Like other highly mobile animals such as deer and elk, the cats can escape fire’s immediate grip. And in time, they may find that conditions actually improve. “In the short term, there may be some reduction in suitable habitat from a lynx’s perspective, particularly in areas where there were stand-consuming fires,” says Scott Fitkin, a biologist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “But in the longer term, as things regenerate—particularly in the lodgepole pine area—within 10 to 15 years that’s going to be prime snowshoe hare habitat.” And where you find the hares—primary lynx prey—you find plenty of the beautiful cats.
Burns in central Florida’s forests are likewise expected to boost populations of the insect-eating red-cockaded woodpecker, an endangered species that prefers open stands of pine where abundant bluestem grass and flowering plants provide insect-rich habitat. Fires have cleared much of the brush from the forest floor, allowing grasses and flowers to return, says Craig Rudolph, a research ecologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “There’s been a massive decline across their range since the 1980s. But we expect them to respond very well to the fires.”
Bears seem to take fire in stride. Researchers radio-tracking 38 grizzlies during the 1988 Yellowstone conflagration found that 13 of the bears soon ambled back into freshly burned zones. Three more bruins stayed in still-burning areas, where they feasted on elk carcasses and clawed ants from charred logs. In addition, canopy-consuming fires allow vibrant new growths of huckleberry—a favorite bear food—on the forest floor.
Still, these positive examples don’t mean that big burns are good for all wildlife in all situations. For instance, huge fires raging across northern Nevada in 1999 decimated native sagebrush—a crucial food for mule deer—and gave invasive cheatgrass a foothold. Cheatgrass then took over, thwarting the sagebrush’s return. Burning faster than sagebrush, the grass also helps to ignite and spread subsequent fires. “The effect, especially in the northeastern portion of the state, has been devastating,” says Chris Healy, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Wildlife.
And smaller creatures that live only in certain areas may also suffer from fires, as the endangered Quino checkerspot and Thorne’s hairstreak butterflies did in last summer’s conflagrations in Southern California. With fires consuming as much as 15 percent of San Diego County, it’s unclear whether the checkerspot survived. And the hairstreak is found only on Otay Mountain, which was almost completely burned. While many reptiles and amphibians can escape flames in their burrows, another Southern California native, the rare mountain yellow-legged frog, may have been lost to fires and flash flooding.
Such losses fuel a debate about the type of fires that are beneficial to wildlife. Years of fire-fighting have led to an unnatural build-up of wood in many forests. Ironically, this can end up fueling intense blazes (sometimes hotter than 1,000 degrees) that kill many animals that would survive lesser fires. These fires can also turn the ground into hardened “dead zones” where foliage and wildlife take years to return. “It’s just far too simplistic to think that fire is always good,” says Norm Christensen, an ecologist at Duke University. “There’s no question that suppression has resulted in fires on a scale that are well outside the range of natural fires. And they are not ecologically desirable.”
Drought can exacerbate the negative impacts of fires, or cancel out the ecological benefits. For example, recent blazes in California’s San Bernardino National Forest have spurred plant growth that will likely benefit bighorn sheep. Deer populations there are already booming. But lack of rainfall could eventually erase these gains. “Drought remains by far the biggest problem on the San Bernardino,” says forest biologist Steve Lowe. “It has had more of an impact on the habitat than fires have had.”
In turn, the public has had a growing impact on forest policy. Lawmakers and foresters are under constant pressure from homeowners on the forest’s edge, many of whom demand thinning to protect their property. As a result, “wildlife and biodiversity has not received a lot of attention in the formation of policy,” says Christensen. In addition to leaving wildlife out of the equation, conservationists say, such an approach to forest management can lead to logging that is much more extensive than necessary to protect homes, and may unnecessarily harm natural habitats.
Still, Roy Hall, assistant director of fuels and smoke management for the U.S. Forest Service’s southwest region, doesn’t foresee wildlife replacing people as a top priority when fire strategies are created. “First and foremost are public and firefighter safety, period,” says Hall. “People live in fire-prone areas,” he adds, “but unlike wildlife, we haven’t evolved very well with fire.” As a result, “I don’t see us getting out of the suppression mode soon. And that depends upon how long it takes us to be successful in restoring fire-adapted systems—in other words allowing fires to play a natural role, without damaging at-risk communities.”
Clearly, the safety of people living near the forest’s edge must be a paramount concern. But the scene in Arizona’s Santa Catalinas stands as a poignant reminder that wildfires can play a crucial role in healthy habitats. That’s how John McGehee sees it. Right now, he’s heading back to his truck, for a bumpy ride down the range’s northern slope. But he can’t help pausing one more time, to gawk at deer tracks and soak up the mountain’s rebirth.
“After the fire, all these grasses were allowed to come up,” he says, “and that’s a good thing for all kinds of wildlife. To me, it’s really an amazing thing.”
