Do wildfires result in more bear sightings in cities?
PRINCE GEORGE – Wildfires have continued to dominate headlines this summer, devastating not just towns and cities, but also the wildlife that lives in the forests. Wildfires displace animals and force them to move away from the fire, and while that is both an obvious and expected move for the animals to make, experts explain large mammals like bears may not be as quick to move into a city following a wildfire as one may think.
“(In situations) where we’ve had collared animals, animals fitted with GPS tracking devices during an active wildfire, we’ve seen them move out of the way of the fire, and they’re back within a day or two, right back to where they started, probably the fire still smoldering in that area. So for those large animals, they’re very resilient,” said UBC Department of Biology Professor Dr. Adam Ford.