Fires in the wild are generally feared among humans, for good reason. But they are crucial to the functioning of many ecosystems, from prairies to forests.
Now, a new study published in the journal Fire Ecology finds that some birds benefitted from blazes over a 35-year period in Yosemite National Park and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in the Sierra Nevada region of the USA.
Of the 42 species studied, 28 showed increased population densities for several decades in regions that had burned. And it wasn’t only known post-fire specialists that reaped the rewards – generalist species, such as dark-eyed juncos and mountain chickadees, benefitted, too.
“Given the effects of fire on bird habitats, and the long post-fire process of vegetative succession, maybe it’s not too surprising that birds are responding to fires for so long afterwards,” says lead author Chris Ray of The Institute for Bird Populations.
Fires damage large trees, allowing for a greater range of plants to emerge. These post-fire ecosystems offer birds a varied diet and a wealth of nesting sites. “Western tanagers and hermit warblers were more abundant at points that had experienced a low-severity burn 35 years ago than at points that never burned in the previous 35 years,” adds Ray.
About 97.5 per cent of the study locations were in areas that had experienced burns of low to moderate severity, so the results are likely not applicable to regions that have seen severe wildfire damage in recent decades – attributed in part to poor forest management and increasingly extreme weather events.
It underscores the importance of fire regimes. Both managed burns and natural burns are needed to maintain ecosystems in a human-dominated world. Indigenous peoples once set fires or allowed lightning strikes to ignite their lands because they reaped the benefits. Suppressing fire is instinctive and natural too. But as the abundance of birds in these Sierra Nevada parks indicates, the terrifying and destructive power of fire is key to the natural order.
Top image: fire in Yosemite National Park. Credit: Getty
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