Fire and Animals

Many animals rely on the shape and height of shrubs and trees, called the vegetative structure, and are displaced when fire removes that structure from an area. Deer and elk which rely on certain vegetative structure for hiding and thermal cover, often avoid severely burned areas until some browse returns. Gophers and ground squirrels often avoid even intense fires by hiding in their burrows, but their survival is determined by how much of their food supply remains.

Birds usually escape fire, but their young may not if a fire occurs during nesting season. Canopy-nesting and canopy-feeding birds are often displaced by canopy fires. Other species, like woodpeckers, may move into a canopy burned area to take advantage of insect populations. Whether a particular species depends on whether the necessary feeding, nesting and rearing habitats remain.

Fire has an effect on insects, both beneficial and pests. Since fire changes the environment in which they live, the effect can be a direct or indirect kill. Fire control policies of the last 75 years have greatly increased insect pests. Insects moving into burned forests increases the number of insect eating birds such as the woodpecker.

Since many insects spend part of their life cycle on the forest floor, light ground fires provide a direct control method. In the Pacific Northwest, several insect pests spend the winter months on the forest floor. Fire can be used as a control method because ecosystems where these pests occur are adapted to fire by trees with thick, heat protecting bark. But this type of control can only be used periodically since fire consumes fuel and it takes between four and five years for that ground fuel to build up again.

rev. 5/2001 rdp