Playing with fire: Wolf response to active wildfires, fire fronts and smoke

Wildfires are a key natural disturbance in fire-prone ecosystems, but their impacts on wildlife are increasingly significant as fire regimes intensify globally. Although considerable research has examined animal responses to post-wildfire landscapes, little is known about how animals respond to burning fires. While fires often trigger avoidance behaviours, predators may benefit from fire-related hunting opportunities. We present one of the first studies, to our knowledge, explicitly examining fine-scale behavioural responses of a large carnivore to actively burning wildfires, testing whether predators balance the potential risks and benefits associated with these dynamic disturbances. Using integrated step selection analysis, we assessed how wolves respond to active fires (burning areas with flaming or smouldering combustion, and recently extinguished burns), fire fronts (areas with flaming combustion) and smoke in a North American boreal forest. We asked: (i) Do wolves select or avoid active fires, fire fronts, or smoke, or alter their movement rates in response to these disturbances? and (ii) Do active fires, fire fronts or smoke alter wolf selection of habitat? Wolves selected for areas near active fires, particularly longer-lasting ones, but avoided fire fronts, potentially balancing risk avoidance with fire-related predation opportunities. Further, wolves altered their habitat use in ways that offset fire-related risks, including moving faster in smokier conditions and selecting for water and polygonal anthropogenic disturbances near active fires and in smoky areas. Our novel findings on predator behaviours during wildfires highlight the nuanced relationships between predation opportunities and risk avoidance, with implications for predator-prey dynamics in fire-prone regions experiencing increasing wildfire severity, frequency and scale.