In the Yukon, work on the “Birds and Burns” project got underway for a third season. The goal of the project is to see how the community of birds that nest in tree cavities use recently burned forests – both the woodpeckers that excavate nest cavities (i.e., holes) and the other birds that subsequently use them. Many dead standing trees are left behind after a forest fire, creating habitat for these cavity-nesting birds and for the fire-loving beetles that lay their eggs in dead trees, which results in a buffet of beetle larvae for the woodpeckers. Under the direction of Dr. Hilary Cooke, the team members -- Michael Quinn, Emily Hollick and Kim Melton – are looking at how cavity nesting birds use these burned forests.

Working at the site of a 2022 fire in central Yukon, the group hit an early bird bonanza, finding not just fire-following black-backed woodpeckers, but three-toed and hairy woodpeckers as well, along with other cavity nesting birds, including northern flickers, tree swallows and mountain bluebirds. Fire is becoming a bigger influence on our wild landscapes as a result of climate change. Understanding how more intense and larger fires may affect bird habitat is critical conservation information.

Elsewhere in Yukon, Dr. Chrystal Mantyka-Pringle and Dr. Lorna Harris went searching in the territory’s peatlands and found depressions formed by thawing permafrost (called thermokarst) filled with Sphagnum moss and some large, sedge-covered fen areas. These discoveries help us better understand the variety and distribution of peatland ecosystems in Yukon, which helps us advance our work to protect these important carbon storage sites.

Our Ontario Northern Boreal team has launched another season of surveying lake sturgeon in the remote – and largely undammed – rivers flowing into James Bay. These globally endangered and long-lived fish help us understand the state of aquatic ecosystems. They are also a culturally important species for the Indigenous communities that steward the lake sturgeon populations that persist in these intact northern rivers. The team was out on the water in May retrieving acoustic recorders that log sturgeon movements, and collecting water samples from the rivers they inhabit.

In July, they will be testing out a new non-invasive way of assessing fish health that involves swabbing mucous from fish bodies (hey, we didn’t say it is glamorous work) and taking more water samples to document how water quality changes over the seasons. They’ll also be attempting to collect some invertebrates from river bottoms to fill some gaps in knowledge on sturgeon diet. This summer work will also involve youth from the Moose Cree First Nation community, part of our ongoing effort to build on the traditional stewardship of these ancient fish.

Drive along the shoreline of Lake Erie this summer and you are almost guaranteed to see a bald eagle, says our Director of National Conservation Dan Kraus. But that definitely wasn’t always the case. These magnificent birds were essentially wiped out in eastern North America by the late 1970s, Dan notes in an interview with CBC radio’s Ontario Morning. Then a few important things changed: indiscriminate shooting of raptors was stopped and, even more importantly, the destructive pesticide DDT was banned.

Bald eagles have rebounded magnificently since this low point and Dan cites estimates of 2,500 nests in Ontario today. Dan says the story of bald eagles can teach us a lot about how endangered species can be brought back from the brink if we are willing to take action and stick with it – noting that it took 30-40 years for bald eagles to recover. Today, the major threat to many endangered species is habitat loss, he explains, and with action to conserve woodlands, wetlands and grasslands, we can change the course for these species. Dan talks about how his kids will hopefully see many more species follow in the wingbeats of bald eagles in this inspiring interview.

After a hot start to the wildfire season in Alberta, it was eastern Canada’s chance to feel the burn – and the smoke. This is just one of the real-life consequences of breaking planetary heat records and hotter, drier spring weather: More intense and larger fires are producing smoke that literally blocks out the sun in major cities, reminding us that what happens in remote regions affects us all. The best way to address the growing threat of more frequent and intense fires is to reduce climate damaging greenhouse gas emissions of course, while also protecting critical areas for natural carbon storage like peatlands and intact forests.

But given the amount of CO₂ already in our atmosphere, we are also going to have to adapt to a new fire regime by making sure protected areas are large enough to not be completely impacted by a single fire and protecting climate refugia. Connections between intact areas will also be more and more important as habitats are reshaped by fire and wildlife need to move.

Fire impacts are a growing focus for WCS research, such as our Birds and Burns work described above, and for peatlands. Two of our Weston Family Boreal Research Fellows are also taking a close look at what happens once the flames subside.