Fire Effects on Fauna

The most direct effects of fire on fauna are immediate effects such as injury, mortality, immigration, or emigration. However, the habitat changes caused by fire influence faunal populations and communities much more profoundly than fire itself. Fires often cause a short-term increase in productivity, availability, or nutrient content of wildlife foods. These short-term increases in wildlife foods, in turn, contribute to increases in populations of some animals. These increases are moderated by the animals’ ability to thrive in the altered, often simplified, structure of the postfire environment. Many animal species are adapted to survive the fire regimes that characterized their habitat in presettlement times. When fire frequency increases or decreases substantially or fire severity changes from presettlement patterns, habitat for many animal species declines.

The following sections from Wildland Fire in Ecosystems: Effects of Fire on Fauna (Smith 2000) synthesize research on the effects of fire on animals from all regions of the U.S.

• Fire Effects on Fauna- Overview
• Direct Effects of Fire- Injury, Mortality, and Escape
• Fire Effects on Animal Populations
• Fire Effects on Animal (bird) Communities
• Fire Effects on Fauna at Landscape Scales
• Fire Effects on Wildife Foods
• Management and Research Implications

For information on a specific group, please see:

• Fire Effects on Birds
• Fire Effects on Mammals
• Fire Effects on Reptiles and Amphibians
• Fire Effects on Invertebrates
• Fire Effects on Aquatic Fauna