Berkshire County — With the Butternut Wildfire traversing more than 1,300 acres over the past week, the fate of wildlife living in the now-ravaged areas is unknown. Local experts delved into the future of the displaced forest animals and what nearby residents can expect to find in their neighborhoods in the days to come.
“The wildfire definitely causes animals to move,” said Karen Lombard, director of Stewardship and Restoration at The Nature Conservancy. Many animals can sense the fire is coming their way and will respond, she said of bear and deer that can relocate easily to get out of harm’s way.
“If there are neighborhoods nearby and animals are trying to escape, people may see more of them,” Lombard said of the larger wildlife. Smaller animals can take cover under rocks and logs, she said.
Dawn Collins, founder and president of Washington, Mass.-based Berkshire Wildlife Services, said deer and coyote are “pretty fire-savvy” and mobile, staying ahead of the flames as opposed to slower-moving raccoons or possums that elevate and usually have a higher fatality rate. Her group treats injured and orphaned wildlife on 55 acres, with the intent to release them back into the wild. “We are expecting a lot of casualties,” Collins said of the Butternut Fire.
Both Collins and Lombard agree that there is an upside to wildfire. Although our society suppresses fire, a lot of the plants and animals in the burning habitat have adapted “and can benefit from fire in the long term,” Collins said. “You may lose individual [animals], [but] fires can create habitat that the animal population may like,” she said. The resulting areas opened by wildfire may create a fertile tract for certain foods such as berries, Lombard said.
“While [wildfires] can seem really scary and they can be scary, there’s a lot of positive benefits for plants and animals,” she said. “Most fires don’t burn every single bit of area; they leave open areas which can increase native habitats and biodiversity which then increases resilience of the ecosystem.”
Lombard’s team is committed to restoration and, at times, has started controlled fires on the ground for their advantages. “So, there’s two sides to fire,” she said.
Despite some animals being hurt or killed by recent wildfires in the Commonwealth, “overall populations of wildlife are unlikely to be impacted,” confirmed Emily Stolarski, communications coordinator for Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife.
Given the location of the Butternut Fire, the surrounding open lands of Beartown State Forest could contain animals that have fled the area, obviating the need for them to stumble through a suburban region. “A lot of animals do migrate across the landscape anyway,” Lombard said.
But the animals that might escape to populated areas are ones that typically avoid human interaction. “So, they may be driven in that direction [toward Great Barrington or Sheffield], but my feeling is that they would do everything they can to continue moving through that area if they had to cross it into something more wooded, more their habitat,” Collins said. “They’re not going to just hang out in someone’s front yard or in the Main Street of Great Barrington and not be moving, be stationary.”
She cautioned that should residents find a stray animal or animals, “absolutely don’t approach them.” “Everybody wants to get a picture and put it on Facebook and get close to it,” Collins said. “There may be animals that are suffering from smoke inhalation so they’re not acting 100 percent like they normally would. In the case of raccoons and foxes, they are rabies vectors (animals that can carry the rabies virus) so don’t try to scoop them up and take care of them yourself. Leave them alone.”
Her team is “on standby,” and those finding fleeing animals can reach out to Berkshire Wildlife Services by calling Collins directly at (413) 329-2004. “Pretty much the whole wildlife community is just waiting to see if any [animal] comes in that is in need of supplemental oxygen or X-rays or anything like that,” Collins said.
