Lauren McKinney
Staff Writer
Forests and wildfires are something that humans have been highly focused on lately, but what about animals’ reaction to these seemingly devastating events?
In the past couple of years, the United States and other high profile countries have had to deal with large scale fires in a multitude of states. Wyoming and Colorado have had to deal with many in just the past year.
There has been a large effort to suppress these fires and contain what is considered damaged land. There are whole teams that try to keep the fires away from human populated areas.
However, humans are not the only ones being affected by the fires. Forest fires sweep across many natural lands that are occupied by many species of animals. Many of these animals are migratory species that cross landscapes and state borders.
Despite migratory animals being some of the most studied animals, there has not been a lot of studies conducted on how forest fires affect animal migration. This lack of study leaves a whole area of the discipline seemingly missing.
“I’m sure there’s a connection, we just haven’t established exactly how migratory animals are affected by wildfire,” said Jerod Merkle, a biology professor at the University of Wyoming and researcher for the Wyoming Migration Initiative.
The Wyoming Migration Initiative is an organization of scientists, led by Matt Kauffman, in Wyoming and other close regions. They focus on the migration and behaviors of migrating animals with different research projects.
Holly Copeland, one of the scientists in the Wyoming Migration Initiative, said what intrigued her about the organization was the work being done with applied science and then trying to make that information useful for managers and anyone making decisions about what was going to happen on the ground.
“Their mission to take scientific data and make it accessible and understandable to the public resonated really strongly with me,” said Copeland.
Some of the projects the Initiative has in progress include research on Yellowstone mule deer, Red Desert migration paths and an up-to-date interactive migration map on their website.
The majority of data is collected from animal collaring. This allows researchers to catalog the movement and behaviors of collared animals without having to watch the animal at all times. The collars hold a radio that sends signal back to a home base where the data is cataloged.
Even though there is a whole initiative geared toward migrating animals, there is still no active research in how forest fires affect these animals’ migration patterns. After years of research dedicated to migratory animals and a shift in academics back to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields, this gap in research is almost unexcusable.
It is hard to predict where the forest will be and if there are migratory animals in the area, said Merkle. The kind of experiments to collect this data cannot be planned and assessed very well.
There are some people who are trying to piece together the information, however there is very little to no projects being conducted. With a whole initiative dedicated to migratory animals, there should be more researchers interested in this type of research.
Merkle said there is a student, Anna Ortega, that is interested in collating data sets that have had fires present during migration and piecing them together.
Ortega’s research is based on multiple years of previous data collected for different reasons. She is trying to see where fires occurred in conjunction with these studies but maybe had been disregarded because it was not the focus of the study.
Ortega said she hopes this research can help with wildlife and land management.
“As far as the importance of the research, it’s really important to try to understand how animals may change their movement behavior after a fire because that could have direct implications on how we manage for fire,” said Ortega.
Ortega said it is not only important to look at fires on migration routes, but fires that affect animals’ home ranges, a place that the animals travel to stay for a season.
Also, there are set to be other fires in the coming years due to the beetle kill that has affected the Rocky Mountain region.
“I think there’s opportunity to study fire and migration and movement, and I think we’re gonna learn a ton of things because it’s kind of these big fires are gonna be new,” said Merkle.
So, with a pathway open for this type of research, there is a gap for scientists to fill, and there is no lack of importance in what will be found.
