Bird Habitat Burned In Valley Fire
By Nicholas Niendorf, Golden Eagle Guest Blogger
Heidi Ware Carlisle woke up early on October 4th to head out to the Intermountain Bird Observatory’s (IBO) songbird banding site on the summit of Lucky Peak. Almost immediately, an alert from a wildfire app on her phone shattered the morning quiet.
Ware Carlisle, the education and outreach director at IBO, walked a few blocks down from her house and saw what many in Boise did that morning: a line of flames heading straight for the top of Lucky Peak.
The immediate concern for Ware Carlisle, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG), and other agencies was making sure everybody in the area of the burn was out of harm’s way.
“Everybody was talking to each other, just worried about human safety first,” Ware Carlisle said. “And then it started sinking in like, ‘Wow, this is gonna be a huge fire and a lot of habitat is going to be impacted.”
Scorched Habitat
The Valley Fire burned nearly 10,000 acres of land over the course of three weeks, scorching habitat that countless birds rely on for nesting and hunting. After all parties took inventory of what was lost in the fire, both equipment and infrastructure, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game turned their attention to the future.
Valley Fire burn courtesy of Intermountain Bird Observatory
Ann Moser, a wildlife habitat biologist for Idaho Fish and Game, explained that sagebrush doesn’t resprout after a fire. Once it burns, it’s gone. That’s bad news for the many birds who count on sagebrush for nesting.
“Especially on the front part of the fire, the Boise-facing part of the fire, there's nothing out there,” said Moser. “And I'm not exaggerating. There's nothing for birds to nest in. They may be able to find some food in some seeds that have been buried in the soil, but there's no cover at all.”
“A lot of focus for Fish and Game, and I think rightly so, has been the sagebrush steppe habitat,” Ware Carlisle said. “That is the habitat type that's going to struggle to come back without human intervention.”
Many Bird Species Impacted
Both Moser and Ware Carlisle noted that they’ve seen birds like chukars, chickadees, and golden-crowned kinglets hanging out in less-scorched areas, but those areas are few and far between.
“The breeding species like meadowlarks, Brewer's sparrows, and lark sparrows, I think this will be a huge issue [for them] moving forward,” Ware Carlisle said. “Because most of the 10,000 acres lost was sagebrush steppe. And so you would anticipate not really seeing any of those birds come back until that sagebrush is restored.”
IDFG has moved quickly to begin that process. Because the ground is so barren right after a fire, it’s ripe for aerial seeding via helicopter. Sagebrush germinates best on bare ground, and the winter precipitation should help it establish roots before the summer heat next year.
Western Meadowlark by Ceredig Roberts
Moser said that sagebrush is site specific, making it critical to use seeds that are local to the area and have a better chance of surviving. Seeds are collected by volunteers and then sent to Lucky Peak Nursery to be prepped for aerial application.
Weed Control is Top Priority
Applying herbicides in key areas will also help stave off invasive weeds like cheatgrass, medusahead, and rush skeletonweed, all of which are very flammable. Keeping out those weeds will give the sagebrush, as well as any native plants that survived the fire, a competitive advantage.
“[Short-term] success for me is trying to get a handle on the competition with the invasive plants,” Moser said. “And if we can do that and if we can really get our native grass communities back in, we are setting the stage to make the landscape more resilient for the next fire. Because those are the guys that are going to come back after a fire.”
A Marathon Effort
The next step is planting. Through volunteer efforts coordinated by IDFG, they’ve already planted 24,000 plants by hand and tractor. These came from a combination of Lucky Peak Nursery’s surplus, the Golden Eagle Audubon-led Native Plant Network, and IDFG supplies.
“We already had three volunteer days for hand planting, and we had 143 people come out over three days,” Moser said. “That's amazing. People do care, people want to come out and help. We're not going to have any more of those days this fall, but we certainly will in the spring.”
A dedicated volunteer force will be needed for rehabilitation over the coming years. As staggering as 24,000 plants sounds, that effort was a 100 acre start on the 9,900 acres of burned land. It will likely take a few years to start seeing a strong bird presence again, and it will be many decades before the area will be as bird friendly as it once was. Habitat restoration like this is a marathon effort.
Moser noted that they still need people for sagebrush seed collection until mid-December, and volunteers are welcome:
Plants grown by Golden Eagle Audubon volunteers for the Native Plant Network.
Many Ways To Help
For people who can’t volunteer right now, or who want to double down on their assistance efforts, donations can be made to support the Golden Eagle Audubon-led Native Plant Network to make sure local plants are available for restoration.
IDFG can draw funds from donations made to the non-profit Idaho Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
You can also help IBO with their recovery plans by donating to the IBO general fund.