Positive impact of forest fires often ignored

    Samantha Eads is trying to get the word out about the forest fires.
    No, not just the dangers of forest fires. But as a naturalist at St. Vrain State Park, this is a concern she deals with.

Black Fire Beetle, image from Science News.

Black-backed Woodpecker, image from Sticky Tongue Project.

Lodgepole Pine, image from Wikipedia.

Black Morel Mushroom, image from Wikipedia.

Colorado Fire Moth, image from Palmchat at Flickr.

    “I want to let people know why fire is important and how it works in a natural system,” Eads said. “Because we have so many wild areas where people are encroaching and building homes, the only fires that happen are the catastrophic fires like the Hayman Fire. Humans prefer not to have fires happen at all. But fires are necessary to the ecosystem. It’s very important to the continued fire diversity in different ecosystems. People have taken its management to a level where it’s basically non-existent.”
    Eads said it’s important to understand that there are two different causes of fire: natural causes and human causes.
    Human-caused fires can spring from a variety of sources ranging from smoking to driving through a dry field, or even a flashlight.
    Fires that occur naturally mainly come from one source: lightning.
    “After a fire, most people think, ‘how are we going to rebuild?’” Eads said. “But this is a time when nature regrows and blossoms like crazy because ash is a wonderful fertilizer and there’s many different species of plants and animals that are relying on fire to perpetuate themselves.”
    There are three levels of adaptation to fire.
    “Fire dependent species can’t survive without access to areas that are burned in a fire,” Eads said. “There are also fire-adaptive species that thrive in burned areas but don’t necessarily need it to survive. And there is a third category that thrives in any disturbed area, which can include areas after a forest fire.”
    Eads believes that if Colorado residents know a little more about the species that rely on these burned areas, fire might be viewed more as a crucial component of the larger ecosystem.

Black Fire Beetle
    “These beetles come in and lays eggs when it’s still hot and smoking in the forest,” Eads said. “They lay their eggs under the bark of burned trees. They have infrared sensors, like the pit sensors on some snakes. Black fire beetles zig zag while they’re flying and their antennas tell them which way the heat is higher. They have such sensitivity that they can get into a hot area to lay their eggs without getting burned.”
    The antenna on a black fire beetle can sense differences of just two degrees Fahrenheit, giving the insect a very precise way to navigate the terrain just after an active fire has moved through the area.
    “You wouldn’t think of a beetle as something uniquely adapted to a fire area, but it is,” Eads said. “The heat they sense is a very specific kind, only given off by forest fires. They don’t get confused on a hot day by the difference between sunny patches and shade.”

Black-backed Woodpecker
    “These birds are rarely seen outside of burned areas,” Eads said. “They can stand on the tree, and camouflage themselves with the surroundings because their black backs look like part of a burnt tree. So they wouldn’t be spotted by predators as easily as other birds, which would stand out after a forest fire.”
    The black-backed woodpecker enters the area following the influx of black fire beetles.
    “What they do, they eat beetle larvae,” Eads said. “Beetles come in when it’s still smoking and they lay their eggs. This larvae is a feast for the woodpeckers. They can eat 13,500 beetle larvae in a year. The smoldering environment is also a great place for the birds to teach their young how to find food.”
    The birds are specialists, relying on a niche in the ecosystem that appears after a fire, and the birds will fly miles to find these niches.
    “Without fire, they wouldn’t have beetle larvae, they wouldn’t have the feast,” Eads said. “The birds will stay in an area until all the larvae was gone. Then they simply move on to another site.”
    But as fires become rarer, the birds have fewer opportunities and have to fly farther to find food.

Lodgepole pine
    “It’s not just animals that are adapted to forest fires, but some plants are adapted, too,” Eads said. “Lodgepole pines need fire for their cones to open to spread their seeds. They have two types of cones. One just opens when the seeds are ready to disperse, but the other kind stay locked up for as much as forty years, waiting for a fire to burn away the resin that seals the cone. The seeds then drop to the ash-rich ground below.”
    The seeds are black-and-white speckled so they blend in with the ash, so they’re not as noticeable to birds looking for seeds.
    “The saplings are one of the first trees established in burned areas, so the young trees don’t have to compete for sunshine as much, and they get as much nutrients as they need,” Eads said. “This is a very good way for them to spread seeds at times without fire and times with fire.”

Black morel mushrooms
    “Black morel mushrooms can grow underground, unseen for decades,” Eads said. “They need a very specific amount of ash nutrient levels and moisture in order to pop up. And these conditions usually arise after a fire. As soon as the first rain comes down after a fire, the fruit of the fungus springs right up.”
    Eads said the fungus is picky about the conditions it needs to peek out from the forest floor, and the it can be this picky because it bides it’s time underground waiting for a fire to arrive and “reset” the ecosystem above.
    “These mushrooms are like ice bergs,” Eads said. “You can only see a small part above the surface, but a huge intricate web of the underground netting exists below.”

Colorado Fire Moth
    “The Colorado fire moth spends most of its life on one kind of flower, the blanket flower,” Eads said. “The moths use camouflage to hide on this specific type of flower, because the moth doesn’t know how to hide on other flowers. They move around all the time. But on the blanket flower, the moth orients itself with their head toward the yellow petal. And unlike other moths that fly away when you approach, these moths stay stationary in order to blend in. It’s kind of silly, but these moths are kind of like coach potatoes, staying in one place all the time.”
    This is one of her favorite examples of how a species can become specialized not to just to a specific space in an ecosystem, but also a specific time.
    “The blanket flowers grow best in open spaces in the years after a fire, so without fires, these moths don’t have a place to hide from predators,” Eads said.
    There are many more species, just in Colorado, that run the gamut from fire dependent to fire adaptive, and Eads wants the public to keep these creatures in mind when they plan for fire mitigation and when they plan their homes and neighborhoods.
    “Without human intervention, there would be occasional small fires that would spring up to help the ecosystem stay vibrant and alive,” Eads said. “Fire is just part of the cycle of life.”

Contact Ben Wiebesiek at 303-659-2522, ext. 206, or email bwiebesiek@metrowestnewspapers.com.