After a little over three weeks of blazing, the Ross Fire, which at its peak was recorded to have raged across about 90,400 acres of North Texas, is now fully contained.
Officials are still assessing the full extent of the fire’s damage, but say the blaze could have varying effects on wildlife and may negatively impact water supplies for years to come.
While wildfires can temporarily displace animals, periodic blazes can help maintain a diverse ecosystem, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department senior wildlife biologist Jesse Oetgen said.
However, water supplies are compromised following a fire’s containment, risking contamination and safety risks to the public, University of Texas at Arlington civil engineering professor Adnan Rajib told the Fort Worth Report.
“It’s a cascading effect,” Rajib said.
The Ross Fire broke out on Aug. 24 in Palo Pinto County when it was first reported to have burned 80 acres.
The wildfire grew within hours to burn thousands of acres. It spread north into Jack County just as North Texas has gone nearly two months without measurable rain and has seen consecutive days of triple-digit temperatures, making this one of the region’s hottest summers on record.
The fire prompted Palo Pinto County Judge Shane Long to declare a disaster, citing the fire’s impact on the public, homes and utilities alongside other safety risks.
The fire, which officials updated to ultimately burning some 89,989 acres, predominantly affected land in Palo Pinto County.
In a Sept. 3 news conference, Long described the Ross Fire as unique, emphasizing how quickly the blaze grew.
The Ross Fire is North Texas’ second-largest wildfire and the 15th most severe in the state’s recorded history.
“Fifty-nine years I’ve been here in this county and so we’ve had major fires. I’ve lived here my whole life,” Long said. “This has definitely been a different challenge with how fast this was moving.”
Palo Pinto wildlife resilient
Palo Pinto County’s wildlife and vegetation is resilient, Oetgen said.
Historically, the county’s landscape has been naturally maintained through periodic wildfires, which leads to a “healthy and diverse” ecosystem, Oetgen said. By the spring, Palo Pinto can expect a flush of wildflowers, attracting pollinators that then support the food chain for larger animals.
“We can really expect to see good things come off of what may appear in the short term as devastation,” Oetgen said.
The area, about 70 miles west of Fort Worth, is largely home to white-tailed deer, wild turkey, mourning doves, a fluctuation of white quail and flocks of grassland and woodland songbirds.
Pocking the Ross Fire’s 90,000 acre scar, there are plenty of unburned pockets, creating what Oetgen referred to as a “habitat mosaic.”
“There are areas where it may burn up a hillside and have, you know, charred black juniper trees, for example, and then on either side of it is still green,” Oetgen said.
In those untouched areas, plenty of habitats remain intact. As for wildlife inhabiting land consumed by the fire, smaller and more mobile animals are more likely to burrow or take flight, avoiding displacement.
“If we zoom into a very small acreage, we would maybe assess that there was some displacement as animals moved into areas nearby that were unburned,” Oetgen said. “But if we zoom out to a larger ecosystem-type approach, the displacement becomes kind of a nonissue. So it just really kind of depends upon the scale that you’re looking at it.”
Displaced populations, depending on the species, can return to the affected land as early as weeks later or as late as months down the line, Oetgen said.
Burned areas typically recover when rainfall and cooler temperatures enter the affected region, attracting more wildlife than before.
Oetgen cited the 2011 Possum Kingdom Complex Fire in Palo Pinto County as an example of an impacted habitat that saw more animal activity after its recovery.
State wildlife officials observed a reduced number of deer in the first year following the fire, but the species population exceeded previous estimates, Oetgen explained.
“Within the next six to 18 months, we’ll see that habitat return to probably better conditions and better habitat than it was before,” he said.
Residents face water quality, safety risks ahead
What happens after a wildfire is often more critical to the public than the natural disaster itself, said Rajib, who studies wildfires’ impact on freshwater supplies.
A fire’s impact on water quality and supplies extends to multiple years, the academic said. That’s because fires leave behind burned, hydrophobic soil, preventing those layers from absorbing water.
Runoff traveling down impacted soil increases the risk of flash flooding and mud flows, a fast moving flow of sediment.
“That flow can be really dramatic and dangerous,” Rajib said.
Communities downstream of the fire also face risks when water runs through hydrophobic soil, as streams are more likely to pick up high-nitrogen material stemming from local agricultural activity and manure and carry the chemicals into natural streams and lakes.
High nitrogen levels deplete water of oxygen, allowing for more bacteria and contaminants to form, Rajib explained. Water treatment plants operate with customized procedures to remove contaminants and sediment but excessive levels may not be treatable, he said.
This becomes a matter of a lack of resources and water treatment technologies, particularly for smaller towns and rural communities, Rajib added.
“If we drink that water or use that water, we may be under risk,” Rajib said.
A fire can be more or less impactful on water sources depending on terrain, Rajib said. His research includes the state’s largest fire, the 2024 Smokehouse Creek Fire, which burned over a million acres in the Panhandle.
Although smaller in size than that disaster, the Ross Fire puts Palo Pinto County at a disproportionate risk due to its rocky terrain and the various freshwater sources, which allow contaminants to more easily intercept water supplies, Rajib said.
“Impact on surface water is immediate, especially in the context of Texas, where you know the weather patterns are very much abnormal and erratic,” he said.
In events such as these, Rajib says it’s important for small communities to call on legislators to fund equipment and look to academics and industry representatives for solutions.
“There is a need to couple the fire” with impacts on water supplies, Rajib said.
Nicole Lopez is the environment reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at nicole.lopez@fortworthreport.org.
The Report’s environment coverage is supported by the Marilyn Brachman Hoffman Foundation.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
