In forested headwater ecosystems fish and salamanders are often referred to as ‘apex predators’, but this terminology ignores the connection to the terrestrial food web via predation by birds and mammals on stream vertebrates. Studies have demonstrated the presence of many avian (kingfishers, owls, hawks, mergansers, heron) and mammal (racoons, river otters, mink) species feeding in forested streams (Burgess and Bider 1980, Harvey and Nakamoto 2013, Fretueg et al. 2015). The presence of these predators may structure fish communities (Vehanen et al. 2022, Zhang et al. 2023) and have been found to be a major cause of mortality of salmonids in some systems (Heggenes and Borgstrøm 1988, Sortland et al. 2023). Further, recent work has emphasized the importance of aquatic subsidies in mammal and bird diets due to the high content of critical fatty acids in aquatic versus terrestrial resources (Twining et al. 2019). Connectivity between terrestrial and stream food webs may be influenced by riparian canopies which are dramatically modified in terms of structure and density after severe wildfire. Burned riparian canopies are less dense with more light availability on the stream bed which may allow for more frequent and more successful terrestrial predation in streams compared to unburned sites with more uniform closed riparian canopies. Further, streams with burned riparian canopy have higher stream temperatures (Koontz et al. 2018, Swartz and Warren 2022, Coble et al. 2023), and recent research using camera traps identified greater summer predation rates in thermal refuges (Sullivan et al. 2023). Thermal refuges may be more heavily utilized in burned streams with high daytime stream temperatures, and therefore terrestrial predation rates may be greater than in unburned systems where thermal refuges are necessary. Understanding predation risk will be useful for population modelling (Harvey and Nakamoto 2013) especially in the context of wildfire and post-fire forest management. We will compare predation in severely burned (open riparian canopy) and unburned (closed, more dense riparian forest) sites. Sites are located within or just outside of the boundaries of the Beachie Creek and Holiday Farm fires. Each site was be equipped with 3 camera traps along the stream reach. Cameras were deployed early in the summer season and collected at the end of the summer (early September) approximately 100m apart. 10 second videos were collected based on triggering events. The student will primarily be evaluating videos for hunting events and using environmental data from a larger project to address analyze trends.