SANTA FE, N.M. -- When the 223,000-acre Horseshoe Two fire burned through the Chiricahua Mountains in eastern Arizona last spring, biologists feared that the Mexican spotted owls that live there might not survive. But when they revisited a nesting site after the smoke cleared, they were surprised by what they discovered: a pair of young owls perched in a blackened tree.

"I found scorch marks all the way to the nest," said J. Patrick Ward, a biologist at Colorado State University, during a presentation this week at the Southwest Fire Ecology conference. "How they survived, we don't know. We think their parents snatched them out [of the nest] and took them to the only green spot nearby that didn't burn."

At first glance, it may seem doubtful that anything could survive the kind of huge fires that have burned large swaths of the West in recent years. But many of those forests burned at regular intervals historically, and the native species that inhabit them have evolved with fire.

Preliminary research suggests that Mexican spotted owls, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, can tolerate even severely burned areas. Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Preliminary research by Ward and others suggest that at least a few species, such as the Mexican spotted owl, appear to be able to reinhabit even the most severely burned areas.

"We're finding out that the Mexican spotted owl is actually pretty robust, and can actually benefit from fire," Ward said.

Generally speaking, the more severe the fire, the greater the impacts to wildlife species and their habitat. In some areas of New Mexico's Jemez Mountains scorched by last summer's Las Conchas fire, for example, the fire burned so hot that it incinerated almost all of the trees on the landscape, replacing what was once ponderosa pine habitat with a barren, blackened "moonscape," said Craig Allen, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, during a presentation on the effects of climate change and drought on Southwestern forests (see related story).

When a fire moves through an area, native species, such as northern goshawks, Mexican wolves and mule deer, will often get out of harm's way. Birds fly away, large mammals move to adjacent habitat, and small rodents and reptiles burrow underground. According to the Arizona Department of Fish and Game, burrowing just 6 inches below ground can protect animals from a fire burning as hot as 3,000 degrees Farenheit above ground.

"It's impossible to determine how many animals will survive a fire and how many will be lost," the department notes on its website. "But records of past fires show that wildlife mortality is substantially lower than one might imagine."

In surveying a game management unit in Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests that burned in the massive Rodeo-Chediski fire in 2002, state biologists found that for the most part, deer and elk did not migrate out of the burned area, suggesting that they were still able to find enough food, water and shelter after the fire. About 28 percent of the unit was severely burned, 27 percent did not burn at all, and the rest was either moderately or lightly burned, according to the agency.

When animals do move out of burned areas, it can result in crowded populations on adjacent, unburned lands, increasing competition for resources -- and sometimes pushing animals into communities. For instance, after the Wallow fire burned through some of Arizona's densest black bear habitat, some of the displaced bears sought food in Springerville, Nutrioso, Alpine and other nearby towns.

Some of the species hit hardest by wildfires are those that require moist habitats. Robert Fisher, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who has been studying the effects of a series of wildfires that swept through Southern California in 2007, has found that some salamanders and shrews were particularly affected by the fires. It's unclear whether that's due to the loss of wet habitats after the fires or because of the toxic effects of the ash, he said in a USGS podcast.

"We are hopeful that the research we are doing -- figuring out the direct and indirect impacts of wildfire -- is going to help us better manage the landscape and build more resilient communities for humans and wildlife," Fisher said.

Restoring forests through prescribed burning and thinning to clear out fuels that have accumulated during a century of fire suppression not only helps reduce the risk of large, severe fires, it often improves wildlife habitat, as well, researchers said.

"We definitely need to do some restoration at a landscape scale," Ward, the Mexican spotted owl biologist, said.

Reese writes from Santa Fe, N.M.