Fish and Wildlife Habitat

Perceptions of the relationships between forest ecosystems and wildfires have evolved. The ecological role of wildfires is now recognised as essential for maintaining the functionality of fire-adapted forests. Although research on the impact of fire on fauna has grown notably, there is a lack of consensus on its global effects due to the variable responses of faunal communities across taxa.

Aim: Forest disturbances are a natural ecological process, but climate and land-use change are altering disturbance regimes at an unprecedented rate, posing significant threats to biological communities and the species of concern.

Fire shapes biodiversity in many forested ecosystems, but historical management practices and anthropogenic climate change have led to larger, more severe fires that threaten many animal species where such disturbances do not occur naturally.

Wildfire activity throughout western North America is increasing which can have important consequences for species persistence. Native species have evolved disturbance-adapted traits that confer resilience to natural disturbance provided disturbances operate within their historical range of variability.

Animals often rely on the presence of multiple, spatially segregated cover types to satisfy their ecological needs; the juxtaposition of these cover types is called landscape complementation.

As global wildfire activity increases, wildlife are facing greater exposure to hazardous smoke pollution – with unknown consequences for biodiversity. Research on the effects of smoke on wild animals is extremely limited, in part due to the inherent logistical challenges of observing how animals respond to smoke in real time.

The effects of prescribed fire on forest pollinator communities are complex and incompletely understood. One of the least-studied questions concerns how these organisms are affected by the size, or spatial scale, of fire.

Spatial and temporal variation in fire characteristics—termed pyrodiversity—areincreasingly recognized as important factors that structure wildlife communitiesin fire-prone ecosystems, yet there have been few attempts to incorporatepyrodiversity or post-fire habitat dynamics into predictive models of animaldistributionsandabundancetosupportpost-firemanagement.Weusetheblack-backed woodpecker—a s

Climate change has contributed to increased wildfires. Wildfire smoke exposes wildlife to hazards and mortality from particulate matter on a scale larger than the area impacted by fire.