Fleeing wildfire is easier when you can fly. But for some condors and monarch butterflies, the Thomas Fire that began last week in Ventura County is a serious threat despite their flight abilities. UPDATE: Since I wrote this on Wednesday, the fire has gone from fifth largest ever to third place (as of Saturday December 16th.)
California condors can fly 15,000 feet high and routinely travel 100+ miles every day in search of food. Until Europeans arrived, they thrived in California’s fire-dependent landscape. Monarch butterflies have been seen flying 11,000 feet high and can travel over hundred miles a day (the greatest daily distance recorded is 265 miles). This fall, migrating monarchs flew over or around major wildfires in Oregon (such as the Chetco Bar Fire) to reach their winter colonies along California’s coast.
On the map gif below, watch as the fire expands above the grey line between Ojai and Santa Paula near the small curl of brown. That’s where the 53,000 acre Sespe Condor Sanctuary is located in a wilderness area considered “The Home of the California Condor.” Monarch overwintering colonies are scattered along the coastline from north of Ventura to the Goleta Butterfly Grove off the map just past Santa Barbara. A main colony area occurs in Carpinteria where the grey line going west from Ojai touches the coast. At the end of the gif (Tuesday morning) the mapped fire surrounds Carpinteria like pincers. Even if the flames haven’t reach the condor nests or the monarch colonies, smoke and radiant heat has.
The fire is creating its own weather, resulting in dramatic wind shifts. The giant pyrocumulus shown below picks up heat energy from the flames and water vapor from the burning vegetation. This unstable column of air is unpredictable — it can collapse without warning and cause 180o wind shifts. These winds are dangerous to fleeing wildlife and fire fighters. If winds shift towards the monarch colonies or the condor sanctuary, they bring toxic smoke and heat.
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While adult condors can fly away to escape fire, smoke is more dangerous to them than to humans. Their respiratory system is highly susceptible to smoke, volatile gases, and particulates. The physiological and anatomical features that help birds absorb oxygen more efficiently than mammals also allow them to absorb more airborne toxins and reach toxic levels faster than a mammal. Condors need to fly away before smoke inhalation kills them.
Biologists monitoring birds with radio transmitters say the adult birds are avoiding the wildfire so far. “Condors are pretty resilient and they can use that landscape after a fire. It won’t really harm the roosting habitat,” claims Steve Kirkland, California Condor field coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The biggest threat is to a condor chick in a nest on the edge of Sespe Sanctuary near the fire.
“The chick is just about ready to fledge, so we haven’t really been able to get anyone in there for a while,” Kirkland said Monday. “It has a radio transmitter on it, so we know that it’s still in there.”
The fire also has yet to reach the nest and [as of December 11th] was about two miles from the spot.
But young condors aren’t really adept at flying right away, even when they physically can, and tend to not go very far, he said.
Monarch butterflies breathe through tiny holes in their bodies (spiracles) that connect to a system of tubes (trachea). The trachea carry oxygen throughout the monarch’s body. During winter when temperatures are coolest, monarch metabolism is slowed and they take in air more slowly. But heat, including heat from wildfires, can bring the butterflies into an active phase where they respire more rapidly and take in more toxins. High winds blow acidic ash that sticks to trees where butterflies roost, and perhaps also on the monarchs.
There are no studies on the direct impacts of smoke and pollutants to monarchs. When asked about threats from the Thomas Fire, renowned monarch researcher Dr. Lincoln Brower responded, “On my first trip to the butterflies [in Mexico], we discovered that smoke drifting upwards from a small fire through the clusters resulted in the butterflies dropping to the ground.”
Although both condor and monarch populations survived wildfires long before European colonists began attempting fire suppression, neither animal’s population is as robust and widespread now. Condors once occupied most of North America and were listed as Endangered in 1967. In 1982, only 23 California condors survived. The recovery program began in 1987 and now 276 live wild (some of these are in Arizona/Utah, and Baja California, Mexico) and another 170 are in captivity. This year for the first time in 32 years, a pair of wild-born condor hatched and raised a wild-born chick in Big Sur. Because condors mature in five to seven years and then usually produce one egg every two years, each new chick requires a significant investment of time.
Monarch overwintering populations in California have crashed over the past two decades and roost trees are vanishing. Goleta Butterfly Grove is closed to human visitors due to hundreds of dying or dead trees. The Carpinteria monarch colony is down 71 percent from 1997. In the late 1990s, 1.2 million monarchs overwintered in California. Last winter 298,464 were counted although these numbers don’t directly compare to the 1990s due to more people counting in more areas now.
Last year’s Thanksgiving census documented the following populations between Carpinteria and Goleta:
- 29,529 monarchs among 11 Carpinteria sites;
- 5,845 at one Summerland site (just south of Santa Barbara); and
- 12,434 at four Goleta sites.
The total for these three areas was 47,808 monarchs. That means 16 percent of the entire western subpopulation counted last year (298,464), occupied roost sites within smoke range of this year’s Thomas Fire. Some of these sites might be in active wildfire areas and the habitat destroyed.
California colonies are scattered along the coastline and should be less susceptible to one major event decimating the population. But because the butterfly numbers are not evenly distributed, they are vulnerable to one bad storm or one wildfire. Such an exceptional event can have an outsized effect on the population that migrates north in spring.
The 238,500 acre Thomas Fire (size as of December 13th) 259,000 acre Thomas Fire (size as of morning Saturday December 16th) is an exceptional event — the fifth largest fire fourth largest fire (rank changed on Thursday Dec 14th) third largest fire recorded in California. The four three two larger fires (based on total acreage burned) all occurred since 2003. This year, 2017, is the worst year for deadly destructive wildfires in California. Nearly 10,000 wildfires have burned over 1 million acres. This includes the more than 250,000 270,500 acres burned just in southern California this December.
The Thomas Fire is an exceptional event that affects more than one monarch overwintering site and may have an outsized effect. Although monarchs don’t necessarily congregate at the same sites in the same numbers year after year, based on last year’s census, a significant percent of the total population may be affected by the Thomas Fire. This year’s Thanksgiving census period ended December 3rd and the data haven’t been released yet.
While our vegetation communities are fire-adapted (thus so are the wildlife dependent on them), they didn’t evolve with such extensive fires occurring throughout the entire year. Losing one condor chick won’t erase the successful repopulation effort. But wildfire #19 on the above table was in Big Sur condor habitat (Soberanes Fire, 2016). We don’t know how many wildfires the new condor population can tolerate. The Carpinteria monarch groves may have suffered major losses in the Thomas Fire. The Summerland and Goleta monarchs are in the smoke. Overwintering monarchs didn’t evolve with winter fires in their habitat, but fire season in California is year-round now.
None of this is normal. We all — humans, vegetation, and wildlife — are the subjects of a massive experiment. Most of us can’t fly away and even for those who can, escape may not be possible.
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