How birds react to fire depends on where they live
Data from eBird shows regional fire effects on bird populations
November 18, 2025 by Olivia Milloway
In a new study harnessing the power of tens of millions of citizen science observations, researchers found that fire repels some birds while others are drawn by the flames. The birds’ responses also varied throughout their range.
“Fire conditions can lead to high bird abundance in one region, but low bird abundance in another region for the exact same species,”
said Andrew Stillman, an applied quantitative ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a coauthor on the study published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
Some species, like the red-cockaded woodpecker (Leuconotopicus borealis), always increased after a fire, albeit to different amounts throughout their range. But the researchers were surprised to see that for other species, like the American goshawk (Astur atricapillus), fires in one region led to an increase in abundance where in another area it led to a decrease.
Alongside the eBird team at Cornell, Stillman creates analytical tools that help organizations like the U.S. Forest Service use eBird data to understand how birds and their habitats are changing through time. The agency was interested in broader scale information about the impacts of fire on wildlife, a task which would require massive amounts of data and the technical know-how to work with it.
Авторское резюме
Короткое резюме: Исследование на основе eBird показывает, что влияние огня на птиц варьирует по регионам и видам, что требует масштабных данных для понимания изменений в популяциях.