These animals evolved to live with fire. But can they outrun today’s megafires?

WASHINGTON POST • July 19, 2023

Animals have long learned to live alongside wildfires, but those coping skills are being tested as Earth enters the Pyrocene, a new era of unprecedented conflagrations like those this summer in Canada that have stained the skies orange and sent suffocating plumes of smoke over American cities. Larger and longer-lasting fires are wiping through wildlife populations, morphing habitats and pushing the evolution of animals’ bodies and behaviors to survive in this new, scorched world. The big question hanging over biologists is whether wildlife can evolve fast enough to keep up with today’s fiercer fires.