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Moose Largely Stayed Within Their Ranges as Two British Columbia Wildfires Spread

Wild moose in British Columbia forest habitat
Research · Ecology

Twenty adult female moose (Alces alces) were already wearing GPS collars when the Sparks Lake and Tremont Creek wildfires spread through interior British Columbia, Canada in 2021. Ten used summer ranges that later fell within the final mapped fire perimeters, while ten occupied nearby areas outside them. None of the tracked animals died during the fires, and those within the fire areas showed no consistent increase in movement or broad displacement from their established ranges. The study was published in Alces on 24 July 2026.

The collars had been fitted for other research, giving the researchers an unusual opportunity to follow animals while two large wildfires were actively advancing. They divided each fire’s progression into periods and compared how much area the moose used, whether their ranges shifted as the fire approached and how far they moved between GPS positions.

The tracked moose showed no broad displacement

The moose whose ranges later fell within the fire perimeters did not consistently move faster, expand their space use or relocate into unburned areas beyond the final fire boundaries. Once fire and moose ranges began to overlap, nine of the ten animals continued to use areas inside the final perimeter. Differences in movement were stronger between the two study sites than between moose inside and outside the fires.

A muted short-term response is not the same as no effect

The authors describe this as a muted short-term response rather than evidence that wildfire has little effect on moose. Burning was relatively low in severity around the Sparks Lake animals and higher at Tremont Creek, and unburned patches or lightly burned areas may have provided places to avoid direct heat and flames. Even so, the study found no consistent inside-versus-outside movement response at either site. The fires also coincided with an extreme heat event, and the researchers could not separate any influence of heat stress from the effects of wildfire itself.

The study was based on only two fires and 20 adult females, and the mapped fire perimeters were much coarser than the GPS tracks. Brief or fine-scale reactions could therefore have been missed. The results show that these particular moose largely maintained their established areas and movement rates while active fires spread around them; they do not rule out subtler behavioural responses or longer-term effects from smoke, heat exposure and habitat change.

Sources and image credit

  1. Wallin, K., Roberge, C., Procter, C., Harvey, J., & Larsen, K. (2026). Moose behavioural response to wildfire in interior British Columbia. Alces, 61, 33–46.Primary open-access research article published 24 July 2026. GPS data from 20 adult female moose during the 2021 Sparks Lake and Tremont Creek wildfires showed no consistent fire-related increase in movement or broad displacement among the 10 animals whose ranges were overtaken by fire. The authors caution that coarse fire-perimeter data may miss fine-scale responses and that the case study does not address longer-term effects.

Image: Maciej (Phase Locked Loop) / Wikimedia Commons — two wild moose in British Columbia, Canada, photographed 10 May 2014. Representative image from the same province; not animals from the wildfire study. · CC BY-SA 2.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ · Source

About this content: This story was produced with AI assistance within an editorial workflow developed by Wildlife Vagabond. Editorial responsibility remains with Wildlife Vagabond.How AI is used

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