Wildlife's Trial by Fire Is Just Beginning
For Jim Bauer, it was a search for life in the valley of death.
Charred remains of scrub jays and woodpeckers and rabbits littered the ground. The towering pines were gone, so were the oaks. Yet as the wildlife biologist moved through the eerie stillness of the smoldering state park in the mountains east of San Diego, he picked up a faint, telltale signal of hope.
And then another and another. All told, seven of 11 deer outfitted with radio collars were alive in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. Just outside the park, two of six mountain lions equipped with transmitters were on the prowl.
"Looking at that fire, I wouldn't have guessed that any survived," said Bauer, a wildlife biologist who is participating in a UC Davis study of lions, deer and bighorn sheep in the area. "Mountain lions need a huge chunk of country, and when you have this fragmented and altered habitat to begin with, a big fire like this will have some impacts."
Although wildfires are part of the natural cycle in Southern California, scientists are worried about the cumulative impact of so much scorched earth on top of other stresses: the steady advance of urban development, pollution, invasive fire-prone plants, persistent drought and climate change.
With all of these strains on the environment, what will grow back now that wildfires have wiped the landscape clean? Will pine forests be replaced by chaparral or oak trees, as some experts suspect? What will be the impact on Southern California's ecological health and how will it affect humans?
A change in the forest canopy can rob animals of shelter and nourishment. Without pine trees, for instance, ground temperatures can rise and the moist forest floor can dry up, making it inhospitable for some creatures.
One team of scientists is studying how the plume of smoke sent toxic heavy metals and pesticides sifting down with the flurries of ash throughout Southern California.
They expect, as past studies have suggested, that tons of copper, lead and zinc particles will get washed into streams, rivers and the ocean, poisoning aquatic life and edging their way up the food chain.
"Aside from the obvious effect on everyone's breathing, these toxic compounds fall out of the sky, wash down and affect aquatic life," said Keith D. Stolzenbach, a UCLA professor of civil and environmental engineering. He noted that copper is so toxic to fish that it's used to clean out ponds and painted on boat hulls to keep barnacles from growing. Lead, which tends to sink to the ocean floor, can work its way up to humans who eat fish.
