Collapse and restoration of mature forests in California
Burned trees on the Sequoia National Forest
Many of our forests in the western United States are at risk of being lost to wildfire and drought. Our forests provide many benefits to people - timber, clean water, energy, carbon storage, recreation, and wildlife, to name a few. Fuels reduction activities can restore healthy forest structure and functioning, making them more resilient to environmental changes such as increasing wildfire activity. However, fuels reduction activities might damage the habitat of sensitive forest species. We conducted a simulation analysis about how fuels reduction might impact the future habitat of an old-forest specialist, the southern Sierra Nevada fisher. We found that without fuels reduction, fisher habitat was highly likely to be completely lost in the next 50 years. In contrast, rapid implementation of fuels reduction turned the tables - and reduced the likelihood of total habitat loss to near zero. Our work suggests that rapid implementation of fuels reduction in some California forests has the potential not only to safeguard our forests, but save our wildlife.