#804: MAPS: Fort McMurray Fire Burns Bird Research Stations
The song bird banding program in Alberta’s oil sands region lost three of Its 38 stations to this year’s devastating forest fire through Fort McMurray.
Biologist Dr. Ken Foster of Owl Moon Environmental leads the multi year program.
DR KEN FOSTER Three of our monitoring stations experienced some level of fire. One burned very hard, most of the trees and undergrowth had been killed.
And again, this is a natural part of the boreal forest ecology. So its not that these areas have been lost per se. They’re just changed One of our stations burned mostly at ground level. So the understory is gone, but the canopy is recovering. And then the third station, some of it was burned hard, and some of it was burned not at all. So where we are very fortunate in a way in that we now have time zero for three of our stations and we can now begin to watch the natural succession of birds and their use of these naturally recovering habitats.
As for the birds, because the fire occurred at the onset of migration, Dr. Foster speculates the songbirds may have crowde dinto other areas away from the fire perimeter..
Thanks today to SYNCRUDE
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
,
, , , ,
Sponsor
Syncrude
Program Date: 2016-08-18