Adaptively Managing Forests in the Northern Blue Mountains to Meet Wildlife Objectives

Photo Credit

USDA Forest Service photo by Adam Duarte.

Savannah Finch, a Forest Service ecologist, installs an audio recording unit to monitor the bird community in the area.

The Blue Mountains landscape of the Pacific Northwest was historically characterized by a diversity of forests of different ages and densities. However, many of these forests are currently at risk for high-severity wildfires because of increased abundance of multistoried stands that created a higher-than-normal density of trees. As part of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, the Forest Service is implementing silviculture and prescribed-fire treatments to restore forests to their historical structure and composition in the northern Blue Mountains.

Public land managers manage these forests to meet multiple objectives, and one of their primary objectives is meeting the habitat requirements of wildlife. Considerable knowledge exists about the relationship between habitat selection by some species of wildlife and elements of forest structure. However, little information exists on entire wildlife communities and how these communities respond to natural and human-caused disturbance over time. Therefore, questions remain about the effects of current management strategies on wildlife populations and community dynamics.

Photo Credit

USDA Forest Service photo by Adam Duarte.

Kristin Fratella, a Forest Service biological technician, watches a white-headed woodpecker excavate a nest cavity. 

Wildlife community monitoring to support adaptive management

One way to incorporate these uncertainties directly into management decision making is to rely on adaptive management approaches that use the best-available information. Adaptive management provides a framework for managers to compare the relative benefits of potential management actions with decision-support models. These models are then refined as new monitoring data are collected after the implementation of management actions or habitat disturbance events such as wildfires. Monitoring the expected outcome from management is needed to evaluate if objectives are being achieved on the ground and to refine our understanding of system dynamics (i.e., learning by doing). However, forest wildlife communities are extremely difficult to monitor effectively across landscapes, and with limited resources, monitoring programs must be efficient while maintaining their rigor.

Working with our National Forest System colleagues, we are monitoring wildlife community responses to management actions and using this information to develop predictive models to evaluate tradeoffs in wildlife biodiversity and wildfire risk.

We have developed, implemented, and evaluated sampling designs that use audio recording units and trail cameras to monitor wildlife communities across two national forests to meet management monitoring objectives and to understand change in species distributions.

Focusing on the white-headed woodpecker

We also conduct complementary work focused on the white-headed woodpecker (Dryobates albolarvatus), a “sensitive species”—declining or at risk—in Oregon, that uses dry, coniferous forests (typically stands of mature, open, ponderosa pine). The quantity and quality of this habitat has severely declined in the region. Specifically, we quantify white-headed woodpecker nest site selection, nest success, and space use patterns in relation to the size and spatial arrangements of management through nest monitoring and radio telemetry methods. This assemblage of information is needed for basic ecological science and to successfully evaluate management strategies.

White-headed woodpecker chicks in a nest cavity.

A novel program

This is the first large-scale wildlife community monitoring program in this relatively understudied region to collect data on the entire avian community successfully. Thus, it provides the data and tools that managers have long sought to help inform data-driven management decision making in the region. Furthermore, actions to reduce fuels and wildfire risk occur across much of the Western United States. The techniques and models we are developing through this collaborative work are being transferred to other forests to collect and process the requisite wildlife data during the project planning phase of the National Environmental Policy Act process.

Keywords

Monitoring, wildlife, biodiversity, coproduction, applied research, bird surveys