As forest fires became larger and more destructive, the effects of fire on wildlife inevitably increased. In some cases, the animals took advantage of the fire, finding food in new shoots of grasses and shrubs or sheltering in a newly cleared forest. Other animals have successfully moved to new places. Others, however, were injured or unable to move. Little, however, has been done to monitor or study the cumulative impact.

Research published Thursday sheds new light on the subject. The article, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, suggests that deer, like many large mammals, are fire-adapted and can live successfully – at least to some extent. Problems emerge as fires become more extreme and more habitats are lost. In the future in a warming world, many animals could really struggle.

“Today (most) of the fires are probably OK,” said Samantha Kreling, one of the article’s lead authors and PhD holder. studying ecology at the University of Washington. “But if we consider climate change and the increasing severity of fires in the future, it gives us pause. It may no longer be beneficial.

The new study is one of the few to have been carried out on real animals during a real forest fire. Trying to research an unforeseen event like a fire is obviously difficult. Kreling’s work with fire was not what she intended to pursue, but rather something she stumbled upon.

She was part of a team of researchers from the University of Washington, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara studying the unrelated movements of white-tailed deer at the Hopland Research and Extension Center at the University of California in the Mendocino County.

In the summer of 2018, much of the land in the center burned down in the Mendocino complex fire, the state’s largest wildfire at the time. (It has since fallen to # 3.) Because Kreling and his colleagues were already tracking 18 deer with GPS collars and remote cameras, they decided to reuse their tools and assess the fire’s impact on animals. The habitats of 13 deer burned while the other five deer were studied for comparison.

The researchers were surprised by what they found. All the deer survived the fire and all the deer that were forced to flee returned to where they came from, even when their house was burnt to the ground. Some animals returned before the fire was even extinguished.

According to the authors, their loyalty to their territory was the result of evolutionary wiring that likely served them well. Past fires may have given life to new flora and rejuvenated other plants, creating a veritable assortment for the deer to return.

However, the concern of Kreling and his team was that at a time of larger and hotter fires, when trees, shrubs, and their seed banks may be completely destroyed, it may not be of benefit to the deer. to go home. The animals, the researchers said, could be “trapped” in wasteland lacking in food.

“It looked like a lunar landscape,” Kreling said of the burn scar. “There were very few patches of surviving vegetation. I imagine if you lived in this landscape full time, your world would be turned upside down.

After monitoring the deer for three months after the fire, mostly performing visual examinations using their grid of cameras, the researchers learned that indeed many animals were not doing well. Many have lost weight and have shown a significant decrease in their body condition. This, despite the fact that most deer, after the burn, roughly doubled the area in which they were foraging.

“Species that exhibit high site fidelity or fixed behavioral strategies may struggle to cope with increased climatic instability and associated extreme disturbance events,” the researchers wrote.

While the study examines only one animal during a fire, it highlights the problems wildlife face as the severity of the fire increases, a point highlighted in the small number of others. studies and observations on fire and wildlife.

In many cases, unlike deer, animals have moved to new unburned areas, only returning after their homes have bounced back. In the meantime, they often run into other issues, such as being unable to find suitable terrain or move into areas where they jostle with humans. During the Caldor fire, several bears wandered precariously through the streets of South Lake Tahoe.

But for deer and animals that move for a while, the wild lands they return to are likely to become increasingly compromised.

“Now that we are seeing these megafires, we are losing a lot of useful habitat,” said Eric Johnson, a veterinarian at UC Davis and co-director of the Wildlife Disaster Network, which was not affiliated with the deer study. “Animals may survive, but what’s the long term for them? “

The Wildlife Disaster Network has been providing care to wild animals injured by wildfires in California since 2017. Among the record number of reports of animals in need of help this year were cubs.

Johnson, however, says he’s still troubled by the amount of wildlife that fail to get out of the fires in the first place, a list he says is growing. It includes bears, foxes, coyotes, and deer.

“We find animals. They are not moving away, ”he said. “I think we owe the wildlife the best possible care because we’re probably responsible for a lot of these mega-fires.”

Kurtis Alexander is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @kurtisalexander