Asheville Answers: How do the Western North Carolina fires impact wildlife?

Editor's note: The Asheville Citizen Times is answering your Helene-related questions — and any other burning questions — in our newly launched "Asheville Answers" column on Sundays. Email Executive Editor Karen Chávez at KChavez@citizentimes.com and your question and answer could appear in an upcoming issue.

Question: What happens to the animals during these wildfires? Did the bears and deer and other critters get out in time? Where do they go if their habitat is destroyed, especially since there was so much destruction from Tropical Storm Helene?

Answer: As wildfires raged across the region, burning thousands of acres in Western North Carolina, staff from the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission were among those holding and monitoring fire lines, said Ryan Jacobs, a regional supervisor in the NCWRC's Land and Water Access Division.

The largest fires in WNC were in the the Black Cove Complex in Polk and Henderson counties, that had burned 7,680 acres as of April 2. Progress continues to be made toward reaching full containment.

The Black Cove and Deep Woods fires were on the wildlife commission's Green River Game Land, Jacobs said. And while it's not typical for commission staff to do wildland fire suppression, it is also not unheard of to be called in to assist during emergency situations.

But as fire activity is subdued, how has it impacted the area's wildlife?

In answering, Jacobs kept returning to the word "resiliency."

While there will be immediate impacts to some wildlife, Jacobs said, those are usually short-lived, and wildlife will recover, as they did during 2016 fires that scorched across WNC.

“From a wildlife standpoint, I feel like these fires have and are having a relatively low impact, specifically to populations,” Jacobs said. He also does not expect a long-term negative response for habitat or ecosystems.

"Wildlife is very mobile," he said. Larger megafauna, like bear, deer and turkey, are used to disturbances and will move away from the fires or find areas of shelter.

These species can also move quickly and won’t be as vulnerable as cavity nesting species, salamanders, snakes and frogs, which might suffer more in the short term. But even salamanders, in the past, have been seen to relocate from areas.

With these wildfires, “you may have some local level impacts, but generally speaking, at a landscape level, it’s probably very, very minimal," Jacobs said.

What about habitat?

Wildfire also changes habitat — opening canopy or burning back understory, such as mountain laurel or rhododendron that grow densely in areas, meaning more sunlight and the proliferation of wildflowers and grasses.

This can have "temporal" impacts on wildlife, like species that lived in those areas before, which will move around the landscape to areas that meet their needs, while species that need early successional habitat will move in.

“The important thing to note is that the fire is not burned down to bare mineral soil across all 6,000 acres,” Jacobs said, likening it to a mosaic. “It burns in varying degrees. Within those varying degrees, it is going to have varying effects on the vegetation.”

Several hundred acres of the wildfires burned through areas that are managed as prescribed burn units, where the wildlife commission conducts controlled burns on its game lands to help restore and maintain wildlife habitat — which means fire intensity was less in those areas than others.

Helene impacts?

Helene complicated firefighting efforts as wildfires spread — with debris acting as fuel or blocking typical access points.

Both the storm and wildfires are forms of "natural disturbances," Jacobs said, with Helene on the more extreme end of the spectrum.

“Any kind of disturbance we say, from a wildlife management standpoint, there is winners and losers. So, there’s going to be some animals, some wildlife species that are going to take a hit," he said.

In Helene's case, the flooding and stream scouring will mean impacts to some aquatic species, like hellbenders. He said they still don't know the extent, which will require more monitoring.

“It’s just a natural process," Jacobs said of the ecological impacts. "From a human perspective, we’re not used to seeing that kind of thing happen at such a broad scale quite so drastically, so it is eye-opening to see that happen. But I think it will be really interesting to see how these things progress ... over the next 10 to 15 years.

Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@citizentimes.com or message on Twitter at @slhonosky.