The fires ravaging the Arctic are not only triggering a planetary climate catastrophe — they are also killing thousands of animals, forcing larger species to move closer to inhabited areas.
The forests of the Arctic Circle have been burning for weeks, at a rate never seen before. In Siberia alone, three million hectares of forest have already burned, and the consequences will be planetary in scale, significantly worsening the already dire climate crisis. "If Siberia heats up to the point where the permafrost begins to release methane, this could be the factor capable of triggering a global temperature rise of 3–6°C, an increase that would certainly result in a mass extinction and the collapse of current civilisation," Italian palaeontologist Andrea Cau wrote on his blog's Facebook page.
The areas affected by the fires are fortunately free of human settlements, but they are nonetheless home to a great variety of animal species, forced to watch helplessly as their world goes up in flames.
Larger vertebrates, such as bears, deer, wolves, wild boar and foxes, are fleeing the taiga in a panic, moving closer to villages in search of food and shelter. Many residents and volunteers, moved by the plight of the woodland creatures, are doing everything they can to help them. "Yesterday, towards the end of the day, a bear emerged from the part of the forest that is still on fire," Arkadiy Fleishter, a resident of the Ust-Kut area, told the Siberian Times. "It was thin, its fur was partly burnt. It was utterly exhausted; it came towards us making sounds that faintly resembled crying. It was not afraid of us and was not aggressive — it was asking for help. We gave it water to drink; it emptied two two-litre bottles. All we had to eat were three packets of biscuits, and we gave it all of them. Some of us — men who for a week have been trying to stop that fire, breathing the smoke, now worn out by exhaustion and despair — looked at that bear and wept like children. Eventually it went into the unburnt part of the forest, and we stayed there for a moment looking at each other, as if asking ourselves how we had come to this point, to this tragedy. I thought: 'How many poor animals have died in the flames of this wretched fire!' " A mother fox was meanwhile observed carrying her cubs out of the woods and settling near a road close to the Ichedinsky mine.
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The species most threatened by the flames are the smaller ones, such as hedgehogs and mice, which are unable to cover great distances. Many rodents try to escape the fires by sheltering in burrows in the ground, but they may be unable to avoid the smoke, and end up dying from asphyxiation. Animals with very young offspring are also particularly vulnerable. These include lynxes, foxes and hares. One can only wonder whether maternal instinct prevailed over self-preservation, driving mothers — unable to move their young — to burn to death alongside their cubs rather than abandon them.
Predators can, however, pose a potential threat to humans and domestic animals. In Yakutia, some young brown bears have poured into one of the remote villages of the Russian region, located in eastern Siberia, killing several dogs. "The important thing," warned Sergey Naidenko, a biologist at the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, "is not to try to obstruct the animals. Wild animals fleeing will not seek conflict with humans; all that needs to be done if one or more of them enter your fenced property is to open the gates and not frighten them. As much as we would all like to feed the wild animals, I would nonetheless caution against doing so."
While Russian president Vladimir Putin has finally ordered the Defence Minister to deploy military personnel and equipment to combat the fires, no plan has been put in place to help wild animals. For many of them — weakened, stripped of their habitat and their usual food sources — surviving the coming winter may prove impossible. To that end, a petition has been launched, addressed to the Russian president and the relevant institutions, calling for the adoption of measures to support wildlife in distress. Among the proposed initiatives are the creation of feeding stations in the forests, capable of providing animals with additional food and deterring them from venturing too close to homes, and a hunting ban in the fire-affected areas and neighbouring territories until the end of 2023, with the aim of attempting to restore animal populations. At present, quantifying the damage to the fauna of the Siberian forests is impossible. What is certain is that these fires — so far away from us, yet so close to us in their consequences — have claimed an incalculable number of animal victims.
