How does wildlife survive wildfires?

How does wildlife survive wildfires?

Northern California is experiencing deadly firestorms as I write this blog.  I remember well October 2007 when San Diego experienced firestorms that burned hundreds of thousands of acres and destroyed thousands of homes. During every major wildfire, I worry about the families and wildlife affected by the fire. I know much about the human impact but until recently, I knew little about wildlife. In 2007 I imagined wildlife dying as flames engulfed their homes. My research since then proved my imagination partly wrong.

Kirtland's warbler thrives from wildfires

While some animals do die in fires, we forget wildfire has been a recurring natural phenomenon for longer than most species have existed on earth. Evolution has sorted out animals that can survive a large variety of environmental disruptions: summer heat turning into winter ice, hurricanes whipping up 200 mph winds, floods of fresh and salt water, periodic ice ages, and volcanic eruptions blackening the sky.

Animals have adapted to recurring natural disasters in surprisingly effective ways. According to National Geographic News, days before a tsunami hit Sri Lanka and India:
• Elephants screamed and ran for higher ground.
• Dogs refused to go outdoors.
• Flamingos abandoned their low-lying breeding areas.
• Zoo animals rushed into their shelters and refused to leave.

"Wildlife experts believe animals' more acute hearing and other senses might enable them to hear or feel the Earth's vibration, tipping them off to approaching disaster long before humans realize what's going on." (National Geographic News, January 4, 2005).

Nature has finely tuned the senses and instincts of wildlife to survive natural disasters in order to reproduce another day. In Northern California, birds fly to safety, predators enjoy a meal by catching fleeing prey but most prey escape, Amphibians burrow into the ground where conditions are survivable, and large animals like deer instinctively run to streams and lakes.

Small, young and old animals are most likely to die in a wildfire. But these are the same animals that are likely to die in the face of the many threats in their daily lives. After all, that is exactly how evolution strengthens a species over time. That is how elephants acquired the ability to predict a tsunami.

In some cases, animals have come to depend on fires to survive as a species. Kirtland's warbler is one example. These small songbirds from Michigan nest only in young jack pine forests. But the pines' cones only release their seeds in a fire. So without fire, much of the birds' nesting habitat has been eliminated. By over-controlling wildfires, we are threatening a bird species.

Santa Rosa Neighborhood yesterday

Weep not for the wildlife in Northern California, it is we humans who are most poorly equipped to to cope with Mother Nature's forces. Apparently we don't evolve as efficiently as wild species; we build homes in flood plains and fire-prone areas, we relax or circumvent building codes to reduce construction costs, we ignore or even deny that our industrial activities contribute to the climate changes which scientists predicted would cause the very events we are now experiencing, and we continue to overpopulate our planet unconstrained by natural forces. Nevertheless, people affected by fires and other natural disasters deserve out sympathy and support; they, as individuals, are not responsible for their plight, we collectively have constructed institutions and technologies that conflict with natural processes. Mother Nature will always have her way; perhaps the best we can do is console her victims and begin to make the sacrifices necessary to improve our ability to live with her in the future.