For 'link' 188 click: Here's How the Los Angeles Wildfires are Affecting Animals from Fish to Snakes to Birds . . . . . . Allen Salzberg --
February 2025
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Here’s How the Los Angeles Wildfires Are Affecting Animals, From Fish to Snakes to Birds
Author: Herp Digest's Allen Salzberg
February 2025
While scientists were able to save and move some creatures in the aftermath, researchers are worried about the prospects for other species
Smithsonian-2/5/2025
On January 23, dozens of biologists laden with electrified backpacks, nets and buckets marched into the smoldering moonscape that the Palisades Fire had created in the Santa Monica Mountains. A rescue mission was afoot, with no time to waste—rain was coming. While moisture would help quell the fires that had been burning for weeks, water flowing over denuded slopes would wash toxic ash into Topanga Creek, suffocating much of the life within. This waterway was home to precious steelhead trout, the genetically unique southern population that persists in only a few creeks in Southern California—hence this massive and heroic deployment by the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California State Parks and others. Before the day was done, the fish rescue teams trekked over miles of creek, used electrofishing and nets to nab as many fish as possible, put them in buckets, and climbed up steep slopes to trucks waiting to take the fish to safety.
In the weeks following the outbreak of the Eaton and Palisades Fires, the conflagrations engulfed neighborhoods, forested canyons and chaparral—a type of shrubland. These fires killed more than two dozen people, displaced tens of thousands of others and affected untold numbers of animals. Mountain lions bolted across roads. People outside the fire zone suddenly saw new bird species appear in their neighborhoods. Other animals, like the trout, had no option except to shelter in place. For some long-lived animals, this wasn’t their first blaze. Intense fires that historically happened once in generations are now so commonplace that a humble California newt, which typically lives for 10 to 20 years, may have already lived through multiple blazes. Together, we have witnessed the kindling of an epoch that some environmental scientists have dubbed the Pyrocene, characterized by the frequency and intensity of its fires exacerbated by climate change.
Ironically, the seasonal drought that had turned Los Angeles County into a tinderbox kept many reptiles and amphibians safe initially. As rain never arrived, amphibians failed to become active and emerge from underground. Similarly, reptiles are less active in dry winter conditions. Many snakes and lizards must have escaped the inferno, inactive and tucked safely below. The depths would have provided refuge for some soil-dwelling invertebrates, and, for the most part, burrowing small mammals like mice and kangaroo rats should have been able to descend deep enough to avoid the heat.
Unfortunately, for some animals neither fleeing nor sheltering underground was an option. Topanga Canyon was the second-largest overwintering site for monarch butterflies this winter in Los Angeles County according to counts by the Xerces Society, a nonprofit focusing on the conservation of invertebrates. The monarchs, having completed a long migration from the Rocky Mountains to coastal California, picked a cool, shady spot to aggregate until spring. Flames encroached on the trees where butterflies roosted and, while the tree grove remains standing but singed, the status of butterflies is unclear. In a year with low returns across California, the loss of any monarchs is a harsh blow.
Scott Black, a conservationist and executive director of the Xerces Society, is hopeful some butterflies, both monarchs and other species, may have escaped. But, he acknowledges, “Some insects might be able to fly away, but I doubt it. I really doubt that almost any butterfly or bee could escape them when these fires were raging. I can’t imagine. These fires came in fast.” After the blazes, Black laments the fate of the less mobile invertebrates. “Springtails, aphids, planthoppers or parasitoid wasps. … Studies show that they’re basically just gone from the sites.”
Jann Vendetti, the associate curator of malacology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, is also hopeful some of the threatened shoulderband snails she studies have sheltered and survived, but she says that native snail response to fire is understudied. “[A population] becomes extinct before we even know it ever existed, because who was studying that tiny population?” says Vendetti, noting few other scientists look at snails, and not enough to investigate each population. “And then fire went through, and its gone.” On the bright side, Vendetti adds, the shoulderbands are hermaphroditic, so it just takes any two to reproduce. If the habitat is still there and some snails are left, they can start to repopulate. However, if they’re all gone, recolonization is unlikely given snails’ limited ability to travel. And that would be a shame, she says: A high proportion of native Californian land mollusks are already threatened, and this would be another blow.
Some larger mammals and birds had a chance to escape advancing flames, but even they would have been exposed to smoke. Olivia Sanderfoot, an ecologist at the La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, emphasizes that smoke from this wildland-urban interface is not just any smoke: “Air pollution from more urban fires is going to have a greater health impact on birds, just as it is expected to have a greater impact on people because of all the particulates in the smoke that are so much more toxic given what’s gone up in flame: plastic, tires, flame retardant.” Sanderfoot, who studies the effects of smoke inhalation on birds, says that bird lungs are particularly efficient at moving air, but that this efficiency comes at the cost of making them particularly vulnerable to inhaled particulates. As miners had canaries in the coal mine to warn of bad air, paying attention to birds in the Pyrocene will help us better understand the physiological effects of smoke inhalation. “Thinking about smoke is very new, and it’s increasingly critical that we really think about this disturbance because it’s impacting people and wildlife alike in new and profound ways,” says Sanderfoot.
Following smoke exposure, Sanderfoot has observed birds in poorer body condition and underweight, even far from the actual fires themselves. Early evidence suggests that even one bad smoke event could affect people and animals for the rest of their lives, says Sanderfoot, diminishing lung capacity and leading to strings of health effects. Birds are a varied group: Some species choose to stay and bear the brunt of smoke, while others leave. Project Phoenix enlists volunteers across western states to keep tabs on birds before, during and after fire events to ascertain how bird distributions are affected by smoke.
As animals return and remerge into the scorched habitat, some, like coyotes and birds of prey, could initially favor the burned regions. Catching prey is easier with less vegetation. Thinking of animals that may benefit, Kendall Calhoun, an ecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, recalls camera-trapping burned areas, “Black-tailed jackrabbits are good at adjusting to open landscape and grassland,” he says. “We would see that they were kind of everywhere after the fire.” Medium-sized animals like skunks, bobcats and foxes also did not vanish. They’re at least able to maintain usage of the areas that burned, although potentially in different ways and taking advantage of different resources, but they’re around, says Calhoun.
But immediately, the lack of shade will harm sensitive animals most prone to drying out, like mollusks and amphibians. This also means less cover for ambush predators, like mountain lions. In the aftermath of the 2018 Woolsey Fire, lions struggled to hunt, faced starvation and transversed wider and wider swaths of habitat, frequently risking road crossings. The behavioral shift was observed for well over a year post-fire. Calhoun studied deer response to wildfire and found that they also increased the size of their range and initially avoided the burn scars, but they eventually moved back into the area. “In the interim, a lot of larger animals, like mountain lions and deer, might be displaced,” he says. “Where that could cause issue is if they’re just displaced into people’s spaces and maybe increase conflict between some of these mammal species and people.”
Back in Topanga Creek, following a grueling 12-hour day of fish rescues, 271 trout were saved. Additionally, over 500 tidewater gobies were saved from a lagoon at the base of the creek in a separate effort. The trout were taken to Fillmore Hatchery, which, in a cruel twist, came under threat from the Hughes Fire almost immediately. Luckily, in the end, another move was not necessary. For the trout and gobies, this isn’t just a brief sojourn; after mudslides into the creek, it might be years until they can return home. Meanwhile, the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains is raising funds to help cover the costs of keeping them alive.
The coming years will be tough for stream-breeding amphibians like threatened red-legged frogs and California newts, observes Greg Pauly, the curator of herpetology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. While they won’t immediately suffocate like fish from the influx of ash and mud, they need deep breeding pools. The amphibians have no choice but to hunker down and wait for the stream to naturally clear sediment before breeding, a process that can take years even with no additional fires to create stream-clogging sediment. Pauly wonders, “Will we see enough habitat recovery in time? Can populations hold out long enough that there’s still individuals to repopulate once conditions get better?”
Another danger to native species in coming months and years are invasive grasses. The coast horned lizard is a species Pauly is particularly concerned about. Already this species has become uncommon in the region. The horned lizards rely on chaparral. After burning, the chaparral is slow to recover, whereas invasive grasses are quick to move in. While it looks dense, chaparral is open close to the ground. Pauly likens a lizard in healthy chaparral to a human running through the open understory of a redwood forest. Once the grass springs up, it creates vegetative mats, impeding movement and limiting animals’ ability to forage, thermoregulate, find mates and escape predators. The rapid growth of invasive grasses hinders many groups of small animals that might otherwise flourish in a post-fire landscape, driving population declines and local extinctions. Adding salt to the wound, the profusion of grasses also creates a significant fuel source, shortening the gaps between fires.
Scientists are still learning how animals cope with fires, especially in urban settings. But concerned community members can help increase understanding, and local scientists confirm the need for community science following fires. Once it’s safe to return, the Natural History Museum’s Vendetti says, “It would be fascinating to go to some of the burned areas and just kind of take stock. … We can go to sites where these species were recently. … Do we see nothing? Are they still there?”
Wherever a person’s interests lie—mammal, bird, bug or slug—a community science effort exists for them that will provide scientists with important data regarding animals’ reactions to fires. The collected data will shed light on how species adapt and recolonize—or don’t. These efforts harnessing community science power include: Project Phoenix for birds, Snail Search to see what snails are active and where, Xerces Society’s Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper, Bumble Bee Atlas, and iNaturalist for all wildlife in and around the burn zone.
The reality of climate change and living in the West is that fires are going to keep happening. The big question going forward, says the Xerces Society’s Black, is, “How do we have diverse landscapes that both provide for biodiversity and minimize potential for fire?”
Bird conservationist Sanderfoot echoes the sentiment and reminds people: “There is an opportunity in L.A. right now to think about the way we rebuild, to live in harmony with the wildlands we are blessed with and the wildlife that brings us joy.”
“I wish people would care more about the fires and smoke when the skies are clear,” she adds. “This is something that requires our attention year-round.”