Nesting birds, including those who make their homes in the cavities of trees, flourish immediately and in the first few decades after a fire. These and other nesting birds will thrive until the canopy begins to close again. One Yellowstone fire study in the 1960's showed that 29 years after a fire, there were 72 breeding pairs of nesting birds per 100 acres. Fifty-seven years after the fire all nesting birds were gone. Large numbers of toppling dead trees alter species composition on the forest floor as well, providing cover for snowshoe hare, voles and deer mice, a fully stocked grocery for a variety of predators.
Biologists expect to see an increase in the number of lynx, for example, which feed on hare.
The winter immediately after the fires was extremely harsh, and some 5,000 elk died, about 25 to 30 percent of the largest herd, in the north. How much of that was fire related and how much was caused by drought the summer before is not known. The northern herd is now about 14,000, substantially less than the peak of 20,000 before the fire. The fires devastated parts of many streams and rivers in the short term. Right after a fire, ash, burned trees and mud flow create a deadly slurry that flows into a stream and can kill fish, move channels and widen the stream by a factor of 10 to 100 times.