During the May 2013 Springs Fire, 24,251 acres of the Santa Monica Mountains burned in areas of Ventura and Los Angeles counties, including extensive areas of Point Mugu State Park and Sycamore Canyon. At that time, locally based National Parks Service (NPS) biologists just happened to have 30 motion-sensor cameras that operate day and night left over from another study, and decided the timing of this fire would give them the perfect opportunity to study how larger wild animals would cope with the fire’s aftermath.
Most wildfire studies to date have focused on how vegetation is affected, but not what happens to animals.
NPS had the cameras set up, both within the burn areas as well as patches of unburned habitat and adjacent areas that had not burned, by late summer 2013. They chose 90 camera points at random, and have been rotating the 30 cameras among the 90 camera points once per month. The project’s success has been largely dependent on local volunteers to move the cameras over rugged terrain, collect and replace memory cards and download data for analysis.
The project has now been photographing wildlife in those areas for more than four years. The first year of photos just after the fire, from late summer 2013 to late summer 2014, have now been analyzed, and information tells an interesting story.
NPS biologist Justin Brown, who leads the study, shared some of his thoughts on the preliminary findings with The Malibu Times.
He noted that bobcats and rabbits had almost disappeared from the burn zones, while coyotes, gray foxes, mule deer and skunks appeared to be using the burn areas almost from the start.
Most of the mountains’ mammals, including badgers and mountain lions, were eventually captured at some point on cameras in the burned areas. But, almost all have been seen far more often by cameras in unburned areas nearby than in burned areas. Species that haven’t turned up in burned areas at all include gray squirrels, ground squirrels and opossums. Rarer species like ringtails have not shown up on any cameras.
Coyotes, surprisingly, showed up twice as often in the burned areas as they did in the unburned areas. When asked to speculate why coyotes would be attracted to a burned-out area, Brown said his best guess was that they were finding insects. He also guessed that “initially, they were scavenging small dead animals that died in the fire, taking advantage of species that are not able to run away.” Species that generally cannot escape wildfires include lizards, snakes, small rodents, chicks and other juvenile animals.
Brown explained the disappearance of rabbits and bobcats partially on the fact that the drought was already underway in 2013-14. The drought meant that no plants were growing to feed the rabbits, and fewer rabbits meant fewer bobcats, who rely on them for food.
After the fire, Brown said, “The rabbits and bobcats had no cover—there was no vegetation left for food or cover after the fire, and they don’t like open areas.”
More recent data from the study has not yet been analyzed to determine if the rabbits and bobcats have come back to the burned-out areas.
Brown said the study is focusing on larger animals and birds, because they can be better captured by the cameras. Although owls and hawks have been photographed, he said the only two species of bird that will probably be included in the study are California quail and roadrunners.
In doing the analysis, Brown said, “We hit an issue with the way we were tagging the photos.” Fortunately, Cal Tech is working on a program that will be able to automatically tag the photos, which he expects to be finished by the end of the year that will speed up the analysis dramatically.
The study is still ongoing with cameras running, but Brown expects to reduce it by half soon. He said the National Park Service is in the process now of determining which cameras and camera points to cut. He said the study will not be published until all of the data is analyzed, including how wildlife used the burned areas and habitat patches compared to unburned areas throughout the course of the study.
The biologists will use what they learn from this project to help the NPS come up with plans to support wildlife as wildfires become more frequent.
