Smoke and haze over the Northeast from Canadian wildfires forced residents to take some extra precautions. But wildlife experts say it is too soon to tell if there will be any long-term health impacts on animals.
Tom Anderson with the Connecticut Audubon Society said volunteers noticed the poor visibility was tough on the birds.
“One place in Hartford in particular, a flock of a beautiful songbird called cedar waxwing, crashed into a building and died. And then other reports of people saying in the middle of the day there were birds smashing to their windows, and they hadn’t seen that before.”
The impact of the region’s poor air quality conditions will not be as obvious right away. Anderson said the success rate of Connecticut’s nesting birds this summer could provide some answers.
“This might be a good chance for the bird community, for conservationists, to be able to tell whether intense periods of smoke have an effect on nesting birds. We might see the data in the osprey numbers.”
Hundreds of volunteers with the Audubon Society's Osprey Nation having been monitoring nests throughout the state for about a decade. Built near waterways and away from obstructions, they are easy to spot, making the raptors great indicators for the health of the environment.
"It's possible that if we see a decrease in the success rate of the nests, that we might be able to attribute it to the smoke situation," said Anderson. "If this is the end of the smoke, then it might not be a problem at all. But there are predictions that it might be a summer where we get a lot of these fires."
While forest fires of this magnitude are unprecedented for the Northeast, when under control they’re necessary for ecosystems in the long-term — creating new habitat, replenishing the soil and removing invasive pests.
