A Word About Wildfires, Wildlife & The Ways Of The World
In California's Great Central Valley, wildfires are not generally an imminent threat, surrounded as we are by acres and acres of irrigated farmland. But that is not the case over much of California's grasslands, woodlands, forests, and chaparral ecosystems, all of which have evolved and adapted over the millennia to thrive with regular renewal by fire.
Fire is an essential part of what makes California so very uniquely California.
I, however, dislike wildfires. My gut reaction in the face of what we perceive as "devastating" wildfires is one of grief: grief over the loss of life and the good green things of this world. Much as I prefer to skip Tolkien's penultimate chapter in The Return of the King, titled "The Scouring of the Shire," I would rather not dwell too much on wildfires and their ravaging forces. (Aside: I totally get why Peter Jackson left out the scouring of the Shire when he made his trilogy of films! But we can talk about that another day!)
Most ordinary citizens, I think, share my feelings. We think of fire as the enemy: a devouring foe that is never satiated, ravaging all, leaving nothing but devastation in its wake. Even when life and property are not threatened, we still picture furry woodland creatures desperately trying to escape a horrific death, and envision the ugly, black, barren, landscape left after a fire has consumed previously verdant forests and meadows, leaving them charred, desolate, and lifeless.
Mordor, if you will.
For six days, those of us in Central California have been living under a blanket of thick yellow-brown smoke, white ash drifting down like gently falling snow day and night. The sun has made only brief appearances as a red orb shining feebly through the pall. A long, greenish-tinged twilight hangs over the Central Valley, each day ending in a crimson sunset that looks as if the entire sky is aflame.
But, as I said, we live in the Valley, not in the path of wildfires. My heart goes out to those whose homes and lives are built in the burning hills and forests of the Coast Ranges to our west, those who have lost houses and livestock, those who are living in fear and uncertainty, transplanted evacuees, and those who are risking everything to save lives and property. Nothing I can say here will adequately address or atone for the heartbreak that must come from living through a wildfire.
Last weekend, dry lightning over the Coast Ranges coincided with an intense heat wave: the perfect storm for igniting our tinder box of a state. Nearly 11,000 lightning strikes within three days sparked over 300 wildfires, several merging into massive blazes, which continue to spread.
The Coast Ranges are burning, from hills and grasslands to redwood forests; cherished places have been reduced to ash. I think of the tule elk herds that roam those hills, a species brought back from the brink of extinction. I think of the endangered Marbled Murrelets that nest in the redwoods of Big Basin State Park, an entire forest that is now, essentially, gone. Perhaps the soft-hearted among you understand what I mean: I feel deeply for every living creature, human and animal, and at times it feels like too much to bear.
Thus, I skip reading about The Scouring of the Shire, and try not to think too much about the fires.
But, if you're familiar with Tolkien's work, you will remember that after the Shire has been thoroughly cleaned and rid of evil and corruption, it absolutely bursts with new life the following year, as described in the last chapter of the book, The Grey Havens:
You see, the scouring was necessary to make way for a new wave of abundant life.
And so it is with California's wildfire regime.
Wildfires serve an essential and beautiful function in the health and productivity of most of California's ecosystems, and fire is a natural and beneficial part of ecosystems the world over. It cannot be ignored.
According to Mooney and Zavaleta's excellent book, Ecosystems of California, as much as 60% of the state of California experiences high or moderate fire frequency, with fires naturally occurring regularly every thirty-five to one hundred years; ecosystems with high fire frequencies, which account for some 40% of land across California, were historically accustomed to burning even more frequently.
It can be difficult, as humans, to wrap our brains around the concept that frequent fires are in fact beneficial to the landscape and populations of wildlife. For us, especially those of us living in fire-prone areas, the threat of property loss and, even more horrifying, loss of life, is utterly devastating - as it should be!
We tend to extend this way of thinking to wild animals as well. It's easy to do, and I am certainly guilty of shedding more than a few tears over lost animal life. To think like a biologist or ecologist, however, we have to change our mindset a little. It's a challenging shift to make, but we must think in terms of the health of entire populations, rather than individuals. (Yet even writing that feels a little cruel to me.)
Research has shown that wildlife populations are not negatively affected by wildfires, and according to the Fish and Wildlife Service, no known populations or species of animals have ever been entirely wiped out by fires. While the loss of a few individual animals unable to escape a wildfire is sad (and I'm not saying we shouldn't feel sadness over this), the health of the entire population, and the greater ecosystem, must be considered first.
Wildlife respond and adapt to wildfires in a variety of ways. They have evolved in fire-dependent ecosystems through many generations, and live deeply in tune with their environment. Most wildlife can and do escape from or weather through wildfires. Birds easily fly away from approaching fires, and most mammals can out run all but the fastest blaze; those that can't, like reptiles, amphibians and small mammals, may take refuge in underground burrows, withstanding low-intensity fires by sheltering in the moist earth underneath rocks or logs. And the timing of naturally occurring late summer and autumn wildfires means that most animals have finished reproducing for the year, and young born earlier in the season are more likely to be able to escape an approaching fire.
Paradoxically, more wildlife deaths are likely to occur after wildfires, due to loss of habitat and food shortages in the months that follow. This is more likely to be the case when there are no patches of available unburned habitat for wildlife to move into, a familiar story in highly fragmented and densely populated areas like much of California. Wildlife may be driven into contact with humans and their automobiles, or starve from lack of food, if there is nowhere left for them to go.
In the perfect system (or, the system as it was before European settlement), regular low-intensity wildfires left behind a mosaic of habitat burned to varying degrees of severity, with plenty of unburned patches scattered throughout. This is the key to wildlife survival and it is this type of fire regime which serves to increase biodiversity.
In fire-adapted ecosystems, the key to successful regeneration is the occurrence of regular, low-intensity fires, which burn low to the ground, consuming the understory of overgrown shrubs, downed limbs, needles and duff, preventing a thick fuel load from accumulating. In California's forests, however, a long tradition of fire suppression has lead to the build up of heavy fuel loads, including ladder fuels, which conduct flames like a ladder from the forest floor into the canopy. This build up of dry fuel contributes to massive conflagrations, flaring high into the canopy and becoming far more destructive than the regular, low-intensity ground fires that creep along at lower levels, doing very little harm to mature trees.
Clearing out the Understory
Wildfires, particularly low-intensity, slow-moving ground fires, clean up the forest floor, reducing the fuel load of dry vegetation that would otherwise accumulate to eventually fuel a larger, more destructive fire. By consuming overgrown shrubs and thickets, fires open up space within a forest, allowing sunlight reach the forest floor. Without the work of fire as nature's own cleanup crew, forests and other ecosystems would lose their ability to effectively regenerate.
In the Sierra, fire suppression allows thick stands of young shade-tolerant fir trees to grow, to the exclusion of nearly everything else. Aphids prefer these young trees, and large colonies of aphids, producing large quantities of sweet honeydew, attract carpenter ants. With an artificially inflated number of carpenter ants at work in the forest, trees become structurally compromised.
Preparing the Seed Bed
Fire clears the ground, burning up litter and duff, making those nutrients immediately available to plants. The heat from fires also serves to sterilize the soil, ridding it of fungal diseases as well as keeping insect infestations in check. The resulting clean, bare mineral seed bed, newly fertilized and free from overshadowing competition, provides the ideal nursery for the next generation of plants.
New Life from the Ashes
Many species of plants benefit from renewal by fire, resprouting vigorously from their crowns, or the base of the trunk or stem. This is the case with many of Califronia's chaparral plants, like manzanita. The seeds of some of these fire-adapted plants are not even able to germinate until they have been exposed to the effects of heat or smoke from fire. Heat from fire opens the cones of Giant Sequoia and closed-cone pines, and wildflowers tend to bloom in greater abundance following wildfires.
Most mature trees, especially monarchs like Coast Redwoods and Giant Sequoias, survive most fires. Thanks to thick insulating bark and the ability to re-sprout from their base, these iconic trees are well suited to living in fire-adapted habitats.
Creating Food & Habitat
Wildfires burn off old brushy vegetation, triggering an explosion of tender new growth for browsers and grazers. Burned trees and the insect larvae they support offer first-class foraging for woodpeckers, as well as nesting sites for cavity dwellers like small owls.
Some wasps and beetles are attracted to recently burned areas, where they lay their eggs in the weakened bark of burned trees. In turn, these insects and their resultant larvae attract many species of birds, especially woodpeckers, which feast on the new abundant food source.
The study of fire science is not an old one, and forest managers are still just beginning to sort through the tangle of problems and solutions that California's wild lands face. Previous generations' natural aversion to wildfire, coupled with a well-meaning desire to protect wildlife, led to the adoption of strict fire suppression programs, which turned out to be terribly effective. Decades later, our fire-dependent ecosystems are still feeling the ramifications of these poorly-informed decisions as land stewards struggle with how to manage nearly a century of accumulated fuel. Prescribed burns and backfires, counter intuitive as they may seem to the lay person, are certainly a step in the right direction.
The future of fire in California is delicate and complex. We now understand the necessity and benefit of regular naturally-occurring and prescribed burns across many of California's ecosystems. But increased human population density, especially in some of our most fire-prone areas, makes carrying this out a monumental challenge. Timing of fires is critical as well, as human-caused fires may be started at nearly any time of the year, outside the late summer and autumn wildfire season plants and wildlife are adapted to live with. Invasive species only make the matter worse, as ecosystems not accustomed to burning, like deserts, become infiltrated with highly flammable annual grasses. Add to this the probability of increased heat waves and drought brought on by climate change, and decision makers have quite the task before them.
Educating the public on the issues at hand is vital. I hope that while this certainly will not help or comfort anyone in the path of a wildfire, it might at least help some of us shift our mindset and begin to view fire in California a little differently.
Remember that wildfire is an essential part of a delicately balanced ecosystem.
May God bless and protect all of our firefighters and first responders! 🧡
Fire is an essential part of what makes California so very uniquely California.
I, however, dislike wildfires. My gut reaction in the face of what we perceive as "devastating" wildfires is one of grief: grief over the loss of life and the good green things of this world. Much as I prefer to skip Tolkien's penultimate chapter in The Return of the King, titled "The Scouring of the Shire," I would rather not dwell too much on wildfires and their ravaging forces. (Aside: I totally get why Peter Jackson left out the scouring of the Shire when he made his trilogy of films! But we can talk about that another day!)
Most ordinary citizens, I think, share my feelings. We think of fire as the enemy: a devouring foe that is never satiated, ravaging all, leaving nothing but devastation in its wake. Even when life and property are not threatened, we still picture furry woodland creatures desperately trying to escape a horrific death, and envision the ugly, black, barren, landscape left after a fire has consumed previously verdant forests and meadows, leaving them charred, desolate, and lifeless.
Mordor, if you will.
 |
| The view looking north from highway 120's "Rim of the World" overlook, the site of the devastating 2013 Rim Fire. This photo was taken the following spring, and already new life is apparent in the green and gold of returning grasses and wildflowers. |
For six days, those of us in Central California have been living under a blanket of thick yellow-brown smoke, white ash drifting down like gently falling snow day and night. The sun has made only brief appearances as a red orb shining feebly through the pall. A long, greenish-tinged twilight hangs over the Central Valley, each day ending in a crimson sunset that looks as if the entire sky is aflame.
But, as I said, we live in the Valley, not in the path of wildfires. My heart goes out to those whose homes and lives are built in the burning hills and forests of the Coast Ranges to our west, those who have lost houses and livestock, those who are living in fear and uncertainty, transplanted evacuees, and those who are risking everything to save lives and property. Nothing I can say here will adequately address or atone for the heartbreak that must come from living through a wildfire.
Last weekend, dry lightning over the Coast Ranges coincided with an intense heat wave: the perfect storm for igniting our tinder box of a state. Nearly 11,000 lightning strikes within three days sparked over 300 wildfires, several merging into massive blazes, which continue to spread.
The Coast Ranges are burning, from hills and grasslands to redwood forests; cherished places have been reduced to ash. I think of the tule elk herds that roam those hills, a species brought back from the brink of extinction. I think of the endangered Marbled Murrelets that nest in the redwoods of Big Basin State Park, an entire forest that is now, essentially, gone. Perhaps the soft-hearted among you understand what I mean: I feel deeply for every living creature, human and animal, and at times it feels like too much to bear.
Thus, I skip reading about The Scouring of the Shire, and try not to think too much about the fires.
But, if you're familiar with Tolkien's work, you will remember that after the Shire has been thoroughly cleaned and rid of evil and corruption, it absolutely bursts with new life the following year, as described in the last chapter of the book, The Grey Havens:
"Altogether 1420 in the Shire was a marvelous year. Not only was there wonderful sunshine and delicious rain, in due times and perfect measure, but there seemed something more: an air of richness and growth, and a gleam of beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-earth. All the children born or begotten in that year, and there were many, were fair to see and strong, and most of them had a rich golden hair that had before been rare among hobbits. The fruit was so plentiful that young hobbits very nearly bathed in strawberries and cream; and later they sat on the lawns under the plum-trees and ate... And no one was ill, and everyone was pleased, except those who had to mow the grass."
- JRR Tolkien in The Return of the King
You see, the scouring was necessary to make way for a new wave of abundant life.
And so it is with California's wildfire regime.
Wildfires serve an essential and beautiful function in the health and productivity of most of California's ecosystems, and fire is a natural and beneficial part of ecosystems the world over. It cannot be ignored.
 |
| Mule Deer return to browse on land that was ravaged by the 2013 Rim Fire, in California's Sierra Nevada. |
According to Mooney and Zavaleta's excellent book, Ecosystems of California, as much as 60% of the state of California experiences high or moderate fire frequency, with fires naturally occurring regularly every thirty-five to one hundred years; ecosystems with high fire frequencies, which account for some 40% of land across California, were historically accustomed to burning even more frequently.
It can be difficult, as humans, to wrap our brains around the concept that frequent fires are in fact beneficial to the landscape and populations of wildlife. For us, especially those of us living in fire-prone areas, the threat of property loss and, even more horrifying, loss of life, is utterly devastating - as it should be!
We tend to extend this way of thinking to wild animals as well. It's easy to do, and I am certainly guilty of shedding more than a few tears over lost animal life. To think like a biologist or ecologist, however, we have to change our mindset a little. It's a challenging shift to make, but we must think in terms of the health of entire populations, rather than individuals. (Yet even writing that feels a little cruel to me.)
Research has shown that wildlife populations are not negatively affected by wildfires, and according to the Fish and Wildlife Service, no known populations or species of animals have ever been entirely wiped out by fires. While the loss of a few individual animals unable to escape a wildfire is sad (and I'm not saying we shouldn't feel sadness over this), the health of the entire population, and the greater ecosystem, must be considered first.
Wildlife respond and adapt to wildfires in a variety of ways. They have evolved in fire-dependent ecosystems through many generations, and live deeply in tune with their environment. Most wildlife can and do escape from or weather through wildfires. Birds easily fly away from approaching fires, and most mammals can out run all but the fastest blaze; those that can't, like reptiles, amphibians and small mammals, may take refuge in underground burrows, withstanding low-intensity fires by sheltering in the moist earth underneath rocks or logs. And the timing of naturally occurring late summer and autumn wildfires means that most animals have finished reproducing for the year, and young born earlier in the season are more likely to be able to escape an approaching fire.
Paradoxically, more wildlife deaths are likely to occur after wildfires, due to loss of habitat and food shortages in the months that follow. This is more likely to be the case when there are no patches of available unburned habitat for wildlife to move into, a familiar story in highly fragmented and densely populated areas like much of California. Wildlife may be driven into contact with humans and their automobiles, or starve from lack of food, if there is nowhere left for them to go.
 |
| A coyote wanders across a recently-burned landscape at San Luis National Wildlife Refuge, where prescribed burns are part of the refuge's management program. |
In the perfect system (or, the system as it was before European settlement), regular low-intensity wildfires left behind a mosaic of habitat burned to varying degrees of severity, with plenty of unburned patches scattered throughout. This is the key to wildlife survival and it is this type of fire regime which serves to increase biodiversity.
In fire-adapted ecosystems, the key to successful regeneration is the occurrence of regular, low-intensity fires, which burn low to the ground, consuming the understory of overgrown shrubs, downed limbs, needles and duff, preventing a thick fuel load from accumulating. In California's forests, however, a long tradition of fire suppression has lead to the build up of heavy fuel loads, including ladder fuels, which conduct flames like a ladder from the forest floor into the canopy. This build up of dry fuel contributes to massive conflagrations, flaring high into the canopy and becoming far more destructive than the regular, low-intensity ground fires that creep along at lower levels, doing very little harm to mature trees.
Many species of plants and wildlife actually benefit, directly and indirectly, from regular, low-intensity wildfires.The examples of life benefiting from what, to the untrained eye, looks like utter devastation and ruin are astounding!
 |
| Another look at Stanislaus National Forest, seven months after the 2013 Rim Fire. |
Key benefits of wildfires, including managed, prescribed burns:
Clearing out the Understory
Wildfires, particularly low-intensity, slow-moving ground fires, clean up the forest floor, reducing the fuel load of dry vegetation that would otherwise accumulate to eventually fuel a larger, more destructive fire. By consuming overgrown shrubs and thickets, fires open up space within a forest, allowing sunlight reach the forest floor. Without the work of fire as nature's own cleanup crew, forests and other ecosystems would lose their ability to effectively regenerate.
In the Sierra, fire suppression allows thick stands of young shade-tolerant fir trees to grow, to the exclusion of nearly everything else. Aphids prefer these young trees, and large colonies of aphids, producing large quantities of sweet honeydew, attract carpenter ants. With an artificially inflated number of carpenter ants at work in the forest, trees become structurally compromised.
Preparing the Seed Bed
Fire clears the ground, burning up litter and duff, making those nutrients immediately available to plants. The heat from fires also serves to sterilize the soil, ridding it of fungal diseases as well as keeping insect infestations in check. The resulting clean, bare mineral seed bed, newly fertilized and free from overshadowing competition, provides the ideal nursery for the next generation of plants.
New Life from the Ashes
Many species of plants benefit from renewal by fire, resprouting vigorously from their crowns, or the base of the trunk or stem. This is the case with many of Califronia's chaparral plants, like manzanita. The seeds of some of these fire-adapted plants are not even able to germinate until they have been exposed to the effects of heat or smoke from fire. Heat from fire opens the cones of Giant Sequoia and closed-cone pines, and wildflowers tend to bloom in greater abundance following wildfires.
Most mature trees, especially monarchs like Coast Redwoods and Giant Sequoias, survive most fires. Thanks to thick insulating bark and the ability to re-sprout from their base, these iconic trees are well suited to living in fire-adapted habitats.
Creating Food & Habitat
Wildfires burn off old brushy vegetation, triggering an explosion of tender new growth for browsers and grazers. Burned trees and the insect larvae they support offer first-class foraging for woodpeckers, as well as nesting sites for cavity dwellers like small owls.
Some wasps and beetles are attracted to recently burned areas, where they lay their eggs in the weakened bark of burned trees. In turn, these insects and their resultant larvae attract many species of birds, especially woodpeckers, which feast on the new abundant food source.
 |
| Fire scars like this one, at the base of a Giant Sequoia in the Sierra Nevada, bear testimony to the tree's natural resilience in the face of wildfire. And the resultant hollows or cavities make snug homes for a variety of wildlife. |
The study of fire science is not an old one, and forest managers are still just beginning to sort through the tangle of problems and solutions that California's wild lands face. Previous generations' natural aversion to wildfire, coupled with a well-meaning desire to protect wildlife, led to the adoption of strict fire suppression programs, which turned out to be terribly effective. Decades later, our fire-dependent ecosystems are still feeling the ramifications of these poorly-informed decisions as land stewards struggle with how to manage nearly a century of accumulated fuel. Prescribed burns and backfires, counter intuitive as they may seem to the lay person, are certainly a step in the right direction.
The future of fire in California is delicate and complex. We now understand the necessity and benefit of regular naturally-occurring and prescribed burns across many of California's ecosystems. But increased human population density, especially in some of our most fire-prone areas, makes carrying this out a monumental challenge. Timing of fires is critical as well, as human-caused fires may be started at nearly any time of the year, outside the late summer and autumn wildfire season plants and wildlife are adapted to live with. Invasive species only make the matter worse, as ecosystems not accustomed to burning, like deserts, become infiltrated with highly flammable annual grasses. Add to this the probability of increased heat waves and drought brought on by climate change, and decision makers have quite the task before them.
Educating the public on the issues at hand is vital. I hope that while this certainly will not help or comfort anyone in the path of a wildfire, it might at least help some of us shift our mindset and begin to view fire in California a little differently.
Remember that wildfire is an essential part of a delicately balanced ecosystem.
Remember, when you look on a charred landscape, that the bleakness and desolation is only temporary, for after ravaging fire comes new life.Remember the Shire.
 |
| Fire Poppy (Papaver californicum), a California endemic that only blooms after wildfires. Photo credit: ©2016 Ron Vanderhoff (calphotos.berkeley.edu) |
May God bless and protect all of our firefighters and first responders! 🧡
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