I suspect a significant amount of wildlife has been displaced by the fires. And I suspect it is a good time to be extra careful with food. Any other tips or observations?

I’m considering bringing bear spray - I’ve never. But I have had these thoughts - displaced predators, burned over areas not yet producing quality food.

In my 30 year wildland firefighting career I have only seen a few dead or burned wild animals, but I have never been on the other end of a fire after we leave except for the Pagami, so I am a little out of my league.

My 2 cents is that the habitat and food sources will significantly increase for the Bears in the next few years.
They will love the berries and other forage that comes after fires, being that this burned in more of a lower intensity, mosaic pattern only helps that. Wildlife loves the edges, whether it is between wetlands and forest, prairie/openings and trees or, burned next to unburned.

It probably would have helped the moose more if it burned more of the aspen and willows. As a past wildfire manager I would have liked to see more of the sedges burn in the wetlands, we specifically targeted the sedges on some of our burns on the Tamarac NWR in NW MN.

Ben. I thought you had a background in biology.
I guess the unfo getting out makes it worse than it seem seems.

Oops.

I do have some biology and I recall watching a pretty disoriented wolf crossing Hwy 1 driving home after the Pagami fire. I am hoping to give a heads up to those going in yet this year as food and habitat issues will exist. We might see more wildlife than usual in campsites and I was also hoping to get some feedback from those going in now.
Or perhaps due to the fire patterns many creatures will return once it has cooled down enough. Always something to observe and learn with nature.

I am not that familiar with ecology of a boreal forest but in a southern hardwood forest the happening place for wildlife is in the burn area within a very few weeks [as in 3 or 4}. I would think there would be some similarities between the 2 ecosystems in this regard.

There is a nearly 40,000 acre fire (currently 87% contained - THANK YOU to the wildland firefighters) just a few miles from where I live in southwestern Colorado. It has been very interesting to see some of the wildlife displacement associated with the fire (and potentially aggravated by the significant draught we're dealing with). We are seeing elk in several pastures/hay meadows close to our home at 8,000 ft elevation. Normally we only see elk in these areas in winter or when calving - this time of year all the local elk are usually in the rugged high alpine environment well away from inhabited areas. There has also been increased bear activity in the two small mountain towns (both under 1500 people) that are in close proximity to the fire. Just last week there were two separate incidents where solitary young bears had to be dispatched by local authorities for entering a home. Both bears were reportedly young and were never seen in town with a sow - in both incidents, these may have been cubs that either got permanently separated from their mothers or their mothers died. There have been multiple reports of bears trying or succeeding to get into backyard chicken coops - which is a new phenomenon locally (although that seems like pretty normal bear activity to me).

Over the past couple weeks, we've gone from nearly 1000 firefighters and alot of heavy equipment working in the accessible wilderness areas to just about 100 personnel remaining. It will be interesting to see if these unusual wildlife encounters cease and the wildlife redistribute themselves back into the backcountry now that the commotion of crews building fire lines has mostly stopped.