Sandra L. Doumas
Wildfires make the headlines when they burn out of control, destroy homes, and rack up impressive totals of burned acreage. Images of burned snags, denuded landscapes, and smoldering house skeletons elicit strong emotions towards wildfire as natural disaster. But these so-called "natural disasters" are largely of our own making. Historically, ponderosa pine-dominated forests of the southwestern US burned frequently at low intensities. Wildlife adapted to these fires and the open-structured forests that were maintained by them. But forests altered by humans burn differently and often more severely, and human alteration of forests is one factor contributing to large, catastrophic wildfires.
To return the forests to their historical conditions, forest managers now allow some wildfires to burn and intentionally set prescription burns. Wildlife should benefit from a return to the conditions to which they are adapted, but may not fare well at intermediate stages of this long-term and large-scale process. Threatened and endangered wildlife, especially, needs to be monitored. Additionally, the status and behavior of wildlife can serve as a measure of progress towards historical forest conditions.
Little is known of the long-term impacts of fires of varying severity on wildlife and whether nearby patches of intact forest can mitigate the harmful effects of severe fires. To this end, I study the effects of intensity and pattern of burn on Mexican fox squirrels in the Chiricahua Mountains of SE Arizona. I am using field techniques as well as GIS and remote sensing to study these effects at different scales and levels of organization. My ultimate goal is to apply empirical research on animal behavior to conservation and management efforts.
