Trial by Fire: Managing Wildlife through Environmental Disasters by The Wildlife Society

Trial by Fire Managing Wildlife through Environmental Disasters

By Katherine Unger Katherine Unger is a science writer for The Wildlife Society.

The Wildlife Professional, Spring 2009

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Pity the poor creatures that face raging wildfires with only instinct to guide them. Recent blazes that ravaged forest habitat in Australia and triggered mudslides in California not only harmed or killed unknown numbers of individual animals, but also damaged habitat and food resources that were crucial for survivors. The wildlife impacts of fires and other natural disasters can remain unclear for years, leaving wildlife managers with the near-impossible task of managing the unknown. There’s relatively little scientific research about how wildlife professionals should prepare for and respond to natural disasters, even though their occurrence is guaranteed. In just the past year, floods washed out bird nesting sites in the Midwest, drought in Iraq dried marshes already parched by ongoing war, and China’s massive earthquake sent shock waves through one of the world’s only giant panda reserves. The picture could get worse. Recent studies warn that strong hurricanes, intense droughts, changing fire regimes, and flooding are likely to become more frequent as the planet warms (Running 2006, Lu et al. 2006, van Aalst 2006, Lenihan et al. 2007, Ebi et al. 2007). Facing such crises, wildlife professionals must study and manage impacts to wildlife with limited funds, little notice, and insufficient science to back management decisions. Where science lags, managers must fill in the gaps, improvising to protect wildlife, human life, and the environment as best they can. The Approaching Storm Early warning of approaching storms—and past experience—can help wildlife managers prepare to minimize certain kinds of damage. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) requires National Wildlife Refuges and other field stations in the Southeast Region, for example, to have detailed disaster plans to help managers protect infrastructure as a hurricane approaches. The plans outline specific jobs for each employee, from readying generators to securing vehicles on high ground. Once a storm is three days away, however, some plans mandate that refuges be closed to both employees and visitors.

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Trial by Fire Preparing for floods is trickier. “There is really little that can be done other than in rare instances where floodplains are being managed as wetlands,” in which case the water can be lowered in advance of flooding, says Willie Suchy, wildlife research unit leader for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Wildlife agencies can also prepare for flooding by reaching out to partners such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. During the March 2009 Red River floods in Minnesota and North Dakota,

for example, the Corps distributed 10 million sandbags to protect cities and towns, an effort which not only helped protect public and private property but may have also minimized the spread of urban pollution and debris on surrounding habitat. Nature often is way ahead of the humans. In many cases wildlife appear to prepare for disasters on their own, usually by fleeing the affected area. Just before the 2004 tsunami crashed onto Southeast Asian shores, for instance, locals reported seeing elephants running for higher ground. Claims about the behavior of wildlife during storms, however, is largely based on anecdotes rather than scientific research. “We don’t have funds to collect data on something like this,” says Buddy Goatcher, a contaminants specialist with FWS. He says that only after a disaster is over does money arrive, allowing basic research to occur, so “before-and-after” studies are rare.

In the Eye of the Storm

Credit: Tibor Hegedis

Distracted by eucalyptus leaves, a koala receives treatment for burns at a rehabilitation center in Victoria, Australia. Fires earlier this year left Australian wildlife such as kangaroos, koalas, wallabies, and echidnas injured or dead, as well as thousands of acres of habitat destroyed.

When disasters hit, human needs rightly come first. However, wildlife rescue and rehabilitation teams can play a critical role in assisting individual animals in life-threatening situations. This became dramatically clear earlier this year as wildfires raged in Australia. Fueled by record heat and drought, the unusually severe fires spread over roughly one million acres and killed nearly 180 people in Victoria. While firefighters and wildlife officers focused on saving homes and people, wildlife rehabilitators, many funded by private donations, took in scores of badly burned and dehydrated koalas, kangaroos, echidnas, and other animals. Similarly, when Hurricane Gustav caused oil spills that threatened waterbirds in coastal Louisiana in 2008, wildlife workers relied on practiced techniques to safely search for and treat affected wildlife. To maximize effective management in a crisis, wildlife professionals can do the following: Obtain safety clearance. Local or government agencies may be authorized to designate ‘safe zones’ in a disaster area. After the Australia fires, for example, volunteer search-and-rescue teams waited to get clearance from Victoria’s Department of Sustainability and the Environment as well as from the Country Fire Authority.

Credit: Tom MacKenzie/USFWS

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service contaminants specialists plot their response following a 2008 oil spill off the Louisiana coast. Such coordinated efforts are critical when a natural disaster affects large stretches of land and unknown numbers of wildlife are in need of rescue.

The Wildlife Professional, Summer 2009

Search systematically. Volunteers in Australia walked in lines to thoroughly “scour” specific areas for harmed wildlife says Fiona Corke, media coordinator for Wildlife Victoria. After the oil spill off

Louisiana’s coast, rescuers scanned the area by helicopter to spot struggling wildlife, and herded flying oiled birds toward the water, where rescuers in boats could net them for cleaning. Practice triage. Before disaster strikes, wildlife managers can prepare tents and medical supplies that they can grab quickly to equip critical-care areas for triage of injured animals. Biologists and veterinarians at the scene can then assess the damage, dehydration, and internal injury and offer care to those animals deemed able to survive. Plan for transport. Rescuers need to plan for vehicles, planes, or boats that can transport the most severely injured animals to shelters for rehabilitation. Networks such as the Louisiana Wildlife Rehabilitators Association and the Oiled Wildlife Care Network provide lists of permitted rehabilitation centers. Seek funding. It’s important to learn about state and federal programs that offer funding assistance in emergency situations. Wildlife Victoria, for example, committed 50,000 Australian dollars to conduct food drops for wildlife in severely burned areas where habitat and food resources were destroyed.

Mouse credit: Matt Falcy; Dunes photo credit: Carl Couret

The endangered Alabama beach mouse (Peromyscus polionotus ammobates), above, suffered habitat loss after Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2004 and 2005. Development in its habitat, such as in the Gulf Highlands area of the Fort Morgan peninsula, right, compounds the problem.

Immediate Aftermath After a natural disaster has passed, wildlife professionals can begin the arduous clean-up and conduct research on impacts, often by partnering with relevant agencies. Don Voros, project leader for FWS’s Southwest Louisiana National Wildlife Refuge Complex, for example, helped lead a five-month clean-up following Hurricane Rita in 2005. Rita sparked an ecocatastrophe along the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, where winds of up to 120 miles per hour uprooted native grasses, “rolling them up like a carpet,” says Voros. They knocked down trees that housed wading bird rookeries and mangled refuge buildings. Voros worked with a 152-person team, involving officials from the U.S. Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Tennessee Valley Authority, and Environmental Protection Agency, to remove tons of debris from the refuge, including refrigerators, coffins, and 45,235 gallons of hazardous waste such as gasoline and pesticides. Voros recognized the need to focus on overall habitat recovery rather than on saving individual animals. The task was made easier by a congressional appropriation of $133 million to help refuges with debris removal and recovery.

Credit: Eric Myers/Illinois DNR

After severe flooding in the Midwest in the summer of 2008, Illinois Conservation Police officers Jamie Maul, James Blakeley, and Jay Danner (left to right) rescued deer fawns stranded on a sandbagged levee along the Mississippi. The fawns were housed at a local fairground until they were old enough to be safely released into the wild.

Assessing the Consequences After the immediate needs of clean-up and emergency response have been addressed, wildlifers can apply science-based management to move forward from a disaster. Following a hurricane, for instance, one of the most devastating impacts to individual animals is from oil released from damaged oil refineries

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Trial by Fire and holding tanks. Such breaches led to the release of eight million gallons of oil along the Gulf Coast after Katrina—nearly three-quarters the amount of oil released during Alaska’s Exxon Valdez spill (see related article on page 36). Karen Gaines, an assistant professor at Eastern Illinois University, has identified a way to use bird feathers to measure the effects of toxic organic chemicals, including those found in oil spills, on clapper rails (Rallus longirostris). “Because they would rather walk than fly, they’re getting exposed and are really good indicators of what’s going on in the marsh,” says Gaines (Novak et al. 2005). Her research involves isolating petroleum residue from the outside and inside of feathers and then comparing the two to understand when and how birds were exposed to contaminants (Sum-

Partners for Preparation and Recovery Those who put concerns about wildlife at the forefront after natural disasters need not act alone. Federal, state, and local agencies are often at the disposal of natural resource agencies in need of assistance preparing for or recovering from floods, fires, storms, and earthquakes. Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA is the lead federal agency in disaster planning and recovery. Local emergency response agencies may call upon their federal counterpart to provide money and other assistance for recovery activities. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers The Corps mainly helps protect developed areas, buildings and infrastructure. These services, however, can be valuable in helping protect offices and other agency buildings. Land management agencies with structures such as levees can also call upon the Corps to strengthen and test their infrastructure in advance of an approaching threat. Environmental Protection Agency When a disaster triggers the release of hazardous material, whether it be ash from a fire or petroleum after a hurricane, the Environmental Protection Agency may have a role in cleanup operations. They provide guidelines and policies about precautions to take when dealing with hazards such as mold, chemicals, and debris. State and local emergency management services On the state level, emergency management agencies offer local assistance to disaster sites. The state or local agency handles the first response to a disaster, and may later enlist federal support if required for response or long-term recovery.

The Wildlife Professional, Summer 2009

mers et al. in review). Research carried out by doctoral student Scott Rush of the University of Georgia suggests that the long-term impacts to the clapper rail population are negligible. Results of a population study immediately before and after Hurricane Katrina revealed that “densities dropped a little bit but not as dramatically as we would have imagined,” Rush says. For the Alabama beach mouse (Peromyscus polionotus ammobates), however, storm damage in combination with persistent beachfront development might have more lasting impacts. Prior to 2004, FWS estimated that only 2,500 acres of suitable habitat existed for this federally endangered species. When hurricanes Ivan and Katrina stormed through Alabama’s Fort Morgan Peninsula in 2004 and 2005, they destroyed 90 to 95 percent of the species’ frontal dune habitat. Because the beach mice were able to burrow down into tertiary dunes beyond the storm surge, they rode out the storms. Yet the residual loss of habitat is worrying. Community projects, such as one where local students install fencing and plant sea grasses to protect dunes, may help the species to endure. Other consequences of disasters are difficult to predict and even harder to recover from. In June of 2008, heavy rainfall triggered devastating floods in many Midwestern states. Six inches of rain fell in two days in some towns in Iowa; Illinois had the wettest January to July on record. The Iowa DNR’s Willie Suchy says that the floods created some unforeseen problems, such as causing damage to a farm that led to the release of hogs into the wild. One year later, the DNR is still trying to round them up. The floods also hurt state wildlife agencies financially. Suchy estimates that the Iowa DNR suffered $1.5 million of damage to roads and levees. In addition, hunting revenues suffered. “We saw a decrease in license sales, especially for pheasant and quails,” ground-nesting birds whose nests may have been washed away by floodwaters. According to Illinois’ Waterfowl, Habitat, and Hunting Season Report for 2008-2009, heavy rains also damaged crops and food plants for migrating waterfowl. Waterfowl harvests dropped as much as two-thirds from 2005 levels in some popular state hunting areas. Illinois DNR spokesperson Chris McCloud notes, though, that the floods and resulting habitat damage didn’t necessarily kill the ducks; rather, the birds may have simply traveled farther south in search of food.

Preparing for the Next One Key to helping wildlife bounce back from disaster is long-range planning. Conducting research and plotting out specific disaster response procedures can arm wildlife managers with the information they need to best serve wildlife. For six years, Robert Fisher and colleagues with the U.S. Geological Survey in San Diego, for example, have been studying how populations of salamanders and frogs cope with wildfires. Humans have altered the fire regime in southern California by erecting utility lines in the dry chaparral desert. “We’ve gone from having small fires in the summer associated with moisture and monsoons to now having dry, hot fires in the fall,” says Fisher. These fires, he says, change the hydrology and the geology of local areas, triggering mudslides that may contaminate small streambeds with toxic ash and alter the structure of the landscape. Such changes are a big problem for populations of fish, salamanders, and other water-dependent species that only exist in small numbers. If a mudslide destroys a streambed, a significant portion of the species could be knocked out in one event. With his colleagues, Fisher has documented 26 populations of rare or threatened species that have been wiped out or dramatically diminished because of wildfires, including the California red-legged frog (Rana aurora), the unarmored threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), and the Santa Ana speckled dace (Rhinichthys osculus ssp.) (USGS 2008). Fisher says the best way of maintaining these rare species might be to reintroduce populations over a larger range to give them a better shot of surviving fires in localized areas. Fire fighting in California is associated with specific agency protocols and policies that must be followed. In California alone, over $1 billion in state funding and $700 million in U.S. Forest Service money is spent each year attacking fires. In the 1990s, fire ecology was a newborn science and researchers debated how best to integrate wildlife protection into fire prevention and fire fighting. Kevin Shaffer, a program manager for species management with the California Department of Fish and Game, encouraged fire managers to examine how their policies were affecting wildlife. “They were doing things as basic as doing prescribed burns in areas with fawning does or nesting turkeys,” he says. “We had to do a lot of training on fire science and fire ecology and wildlife and fire interactions,” he adds—training that was accomplished through a fire education pro-

Credit: John McColgan/BLM

Two elk stand silhouetted in the glow of a wildfire (above) that torched part of Montana’s Bitterroot National Forest in 2000. While some species perish or lose habitat in fires, others thrive. Two weeks after the so-called Harris fire swept through parts of southern California in 2007 (below), U.S. Geological Survey scientist Robert Fisher, left, examined the speedy growth of an invasive plant taking root in the charred soils.

Credit: USGS

gram launched through the University of California system. Today, Shaffer says the field of fire ecology is small but growing. If there is a silver lining to the tragedy that often accompanies natural disasters, it is that their drama can focus attention on a problem that may have otherwise gone unsolved. The devastation of Rita and Katrina has helped win Gulf Coast communities over to the idea of rebuilding coastal wetlands. “These wetlands play a role in preserving adjacent communities,” says Don Voros, by slowing down storms and reducing flooding when the storm

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Trial by Fire makes landfall. The same philosophy is being applied in Southeast Asia, where managers and local communities have been rousing support to replant mangrove forests on the coasts in the hope of reducing the intensity of a future tsunami (Barbier 2006, Costanza and Farley 2007). In the case of last year’s earthquake in China’s Sichuan province, scientists have begun to discuss ways of rebuilding from the damage to one of the world’s only giant panda preserves in such a way as to reap benefits for the species (Wang et al. 2008).

Human-Wildlife Conflicts This attention on long-term recovery and planning extends to how people react after disaster. In certain cases, a natural disaster can have ripple effects in places far removed from the impact zone. The World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Humanitarian Partnership Program has teamed with the American Red Cross to help mitigate the environmental

impacts of natural disasters, including efforts to rebuild. Following the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, for example, some Sri Lankans were forced to abandon their destroyed villages and resettle elsewhere. WWF employees participated in negotiations with a village that had relocated along the banks of the Nilwala River, which is home to crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus). The crocs made bathing and washing clothes in the river a dangerous task, yet the species was also endangered. In the end the WWF team helped the community understand the ecological importance of the crocodile, while developing methods to keep both safe. Hurricanes, war, fire, volcanoes, tsunamis, oil spills, and floods have always been part of life on this planet. Indeed, as climate change advances, the disaster business may become a growth industry. These threats demand the time, attention, and dollars of wildlife agencies and also require a longterm perspective for research and management

When Humans Spark Disasters Nuclear accidents, war, and other human-caused catastrophes can quickly trigger dramatic changes to the natural environment. Some of these changes can devastate a species, while others may actually beneﬁt wildlife, proving nature’s resilience. Consider the tragedies in Korea, Sudan, and Chernobyl. No-Man’s Land Fighting during the Korean War left more than 100,000 soldiers dead, a human tragedy. Yet for wildlife, the conflict resulted in a massive sweep of pristine habitat. An armistice agreement in 1953 ended the war and created the DMZ (demilitarized zone), a 4-by-248-kilometer strip of jungle dividing the Korean peninsula into North and South. Lined by barbed wire and landmines, the DMZ has become an unlikely refuge for Asiatic black bears, Goral sheep, Eurasian lynx, and perhaps even rare Amur tigers. In 1997 Ke Chung Kim, emeritus professor of entomology at Pennsylvania State University, helped launch the DMZ Forum, a U.S.-based nonprofit whose mission is to conserve the zone as a wildlife preserve

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and peace park. According to Kim, the DMZ stands in stark contrast to the countries it divides, which have decimated their natural environments with rapid development. The DMZ may therefore be one of the last hopes of reseeding the rest of the peninsula with native vegetation and wildlife. “I expect we will find a lot of things we thought had disappeared from the Korean peninsula growing well there,” Kim says. Wartime Survivors In Sudan two civil wars and widespread genocide have afflicted the country since the 1950s. With their farms burned and livestock destroyed, millions of homeless, hungry Sudanese have had to kill and eat wildlife in order to survive. At the conclusion of the second civil war in 2005, scientists

Credits: Tim Mousseau

The abscess on a barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) may be a sign of ongoing radiation poisoning for wildlife at Chernobyl.

from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) were allowed back into the country to assess the status of its wildlife. Rumors from scientists in neighboring Kenya hinted that wildlife populations had survived to

planning. At the same time, one may derive some comfort from the demonstrated fact that wildlife is often more resilient than we realize. Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) in Louisiana, for example, were pushed north, killed outright, or subjected to salt water intrusions after a storm surge invaded their habitat during Hurricane Rita in 2005. A severe drought in 2006 then prevented the reptiles from nesting that year. Yet a study by wildlife biologist Ruth Elsey of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and colleagues demonstrated that female alligators returned in 2007 to nest only meters away from the sites they used before the hurricane (Elsey et al. 2008). “I always seem to use the word ‘resilient’ when I talk about them,” says Elsey. “They’ve been around for hundreds of millions of years and they’ve seen many hurricanes. They bounce right back.”

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a greater extent than expected, but the international conservation community was skeptical. In 2006, for example, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that only 300 elephants remained in Sudan, down from 133,000 in the 1970s (IUCN 2007).

people, mainly accident responders, were directly killed from radiation exposure. Thousands more are believed to have died in the aftermath, primarily due to elevated cancer rates. Today, however, scientists continue to debate how wildlife in the contaminated area is faring.

When WCS scientists flew over the southern reaches of the country, however, they captured images of a thriving wildlife migration. An estimated 1.5 million land mammals including tiang, elephants, white-eared kob, and ostriches roamed across the land. WCS and other groups are now working with officials in southern Sudan to rebuild national parks and implement wildlife policies. “If peace holds,” says James Deutsch, director of Africa programs for WCS, “we can start to develop community benefits, even tourism.”

Texas Tech University professor Robert Baker has visited Chernobyl more than 20 times, mainly to study vole genetic mutations as a way of discerning radioactive damage to wildlife. Initial results looked bleak: Baker and colleagues found rates of genetic mutation hundreds of times higher than normal in Chernobyl voles (Baker et al. 1996). After resequencing the samples with automatic sequencing technology, however, they could not reproduce their results and retracted their paper (Baker et al. 1997). Subsequent studies indicate voles are thriving even in contaminated areas, perhaps due to the almost complete abandonment of the

Mixed Views on Resilience When Chernobyl’s nuclear reactor number four exploded in 1986, a few dozen

area by humans. In fact, because Baker has seen plentiful moose, wild boar, and other megafauna in the area, he says that going to Chernobyl today is “like visiting Yellowstone.” Other scientists firmly disagree with this view of Chernobyl as a wildlife haven. For nearly a decade Tim Mousseau, a biology professor at the University of South Carolina, and evolutionary biologist Andres Møller of the University of Paris have studied the ecology of Chernobyl. In one study they found that bird abundance had decreased by nearly two-thirds in the most contaminated areas (Møller and Mousseau 2007). In March they published an article on spider and insect survival, again finding numbers dramatically reduced in Chernobyl’s radioactive areas compared to control areas in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe (Møller and Mousseau 2009). For wildlife, then, the ultimate impacts of nuclear disaster remain unknown.