Tap, tap, tap: Boreal forest starting to bounce back from Fort McMurray wildfire
FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. — The drumming of black-backed woodpeckers is a sure sign the boreal forest is slowly bouncing back from the devastation caused by last spring’s wildfire near Fort McMurray.
Woodpeckers are busy in the roughly 5,900-square-kilometre area in northern Alberta that was torched. The birds gorge on bugs that have been attracted to dead and dying trees.
Flames that killed birds and animals or forced them to flee have created conditions for different species to flourish.
“The population of those kinds of woodpeckers will just sort of explode in that early post-fire habitat,” said Steve Van Wilgenburg, a boreal ecologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service.