Fire Ecology

One of the most striking patterns that emerged from our surveys of burned forests is that younger forests and forests that have been thinned to be more fire resistant do not create suitable conditions for birds that require burned forest conditions to thrive. This is because older forests have an abundance of conifer snags (or aspen) with cavities. After a severe fire, 73% of the 48 cavity nests that I found in my earliest studies were located in already existing snags or aspen, even though those trees made up only 8% of the trees out there.

If you don’t have old-growth elements in a forest before a fire, you won’t have the amazing response by cavity-nesting birds that you would normally have after a fire…simple as that!