Summary

Ecologists and ornithologists have been studying the effects of wildfire on bird populations all over the world. Their research has resulted in many fascinating discoveries about the relationships between fire and birds.

Wildfires have been in the news a lot in recent years. In the western US where I live, enormous fires have been sweeping across California, Oregon, Idaho, and other states with increasing frequency and severity.

And who can forget the 2019-2020 bushfire season in Australia, which came to be known as the “Black Summer?” Then there were the thousands of fires that broke out in the rainforests and wetlands of Brazil in 2020.

This is all pretty bad news, no doubt. It can be gut-wrenching to watch beautiful wilderness go up in flames, not to mention towns and people’s homes.

But if we temporarily set aside our emotions, we can take a more scientific, objective viewpoint to ask the question:

Are wildfires harmful to birds and other wildlife, in general?

It turns out there’s no simple “yes or no” answer to that question.

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Links of Interest

• Old Flames: The Tangled History of Forest Fires, Wildlife, and People
• Bringing Back the Red-cockaded Woodpecker: Are Prescribed Fire and Artificial Nests Enough?
• New Study Is First to Explore How Wildfire Smoke Derails Bird Migration
• These Birds of Prey Are Deliberately Setting Forests on Fire

Research Citations

• Fire and avian ecology in North America: Process influencing pattern
• Responses of birds to large-scale wildfires in southern California
• Using Citizen Monitoring to Track Post-Wildfire Bird Communities in the Arizona Sky Islands
• Megafires and thick smoke portend big problems for migratory birds
• Intentional Fire-Spreading by “Firehawk” Raptors in Northern Australia
• Seed predation by birds shortly after a wildfire in a Corsican pine forest

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Photos of Some Species Mentioned

Attributions

• Black-backed Woodpecker sounds (Xeno Canto recording XC482561)
• Black-backed Woodpecker sounds (Xeno Canto recording XC526701)
• Kirtland's Warbler sounds (Xeno Canto recording XC322494)