French wildfires are turning animals’ homes into ‘a desert of ashes’
The catastrophic fires have potential to do long-term damage to many wild animal populations, but a toad species could be the most affected.
This summer, wildfires have raged across Europe, with France and Spain particularly hard hit. In France alone, more than 200,000 people have had to flee their homes, and four firefighters have died. At least 13 people have died in Spain when they were unable to escape the flames.
It’s a clear humanitarian crisis, but horrors are playing out for wildlife too. Just like humans, wild animals are also fleeing the flames—but many have not been able to escape in time, and millions of animals are predicted to have died, says Céline Sissler-Bienvenu, an expert in wildlife disaster response and founder of Planimalia, a consultancy firm dedicated to animal management during crises. “It's an ecological disaster.”
Climate change is the main contributor to the fires in France and Spain, and these increased temperatures cause drought because hotter air can hold more moisture. This causes the atmosphere to become thirsty, “sucking up the moisture from the ground, from the plants,” says climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. The dried-out vegetation turned into kindling just waiting for a spark.
For animals who survived the fires near Bordeaux, France, the picture is still bleak. What once was their habitat is now 42,000 hectares—or more than 100,000 acres—of scorched wasteland. “It's like Pompeii,” says Grégoire Loïs, a naturalist at the National Museum of Natural History in France. “It's a desert of ashes.”
Many animals are in danger—but scientists are concerned about one ‘local treasure’
A wide variety of wildlife is being impacted by these fires, experts say. With their forest home gone and no shrubbery or leaves for camouflage, small animals such as shrews, hedgehogs, and lizards have fewer places to hide from predators and can easily become prey. And the insects they like to eat may have been wiped out by the disaster, leaving them with nothing to forage on.
Many animals then venture into urban areas looking for sustenance, putting themselves at risk, Sissler-Bienvenu says: “Every time there are wildfires, [we see] a peak of collisions with cars because they are disoriented and they are lost.”
Ash and toxic flame retardants also pollute the water and soil, says Sissler-Bienvenu, making it harder for animals to find food and water and potentially causing lifelong health issues, such as reproductive problems.
While the wildfires are impacting all animals, some scientists are especially concerned about a few taxa. Deer can run and fully fledged birds can fly away, says Loïs, but “that’s not the case for reptiles and amphibians.”
One rare toad population has likely been hard hit by the wildfires. The Western spadefoot toad (Pelobates cultripes)—listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List—is a slow-moving nocturnal animal found in the forests and wetlands of southern France, Spain, and Portugal. Its population is so small that the ground-dwelling amphibian is “considered a local treasure everywhere,” says Loïs.
Before the fire, the species was facing a variety of threats. Its habitat has been destroyed for urban infrastructure and agricultural expansion. The arrival of invasive species, such as predatory Louisiana crayfish, and increasing traffic collisions have stressed them further. This toad’s population is thought to have declined by more than a third over the past 20 or so years. Now, the disastrous wildfires could further decimate them.
Their population is so small that “any kind of loss is a tragedy,” says Loïs. Unable to run away as quickly as deer or boars, many of these toads may have succumbed to the heat, flames, and smoke. Scientists have yet to learn the true extent of the losses, though some say there may be hope. Loïs says he saw a photo online of a common frog “in the hand of an observer in a burnt area.”
“So, this one could escape and it was found trying to find its way in the ashes,” he says. If common frogs survived, perhaps some Western spadefoot toads did too.
As burrowing toads, they live in dens in the ground that they either dig themselves or find abandoned by other animals. These burrows protect them from any extremes of cold or heat at the surface—another hopeful fact. Hiding in these burrows, which can be almost one meter deep, some individuals may have survived, particularly if there was not much dried vegetation on the soil, which would have meant the fire passed by quickly.
“Flora and vegetation will come back with the next rain,” Sissler-Bienvenu says. “Nature can be very resilient. But for the animals, it will be a long, long time to recover.”
