Frequent burning and limited stand‑replacing fire supports Mexican spotted owl pair occupancy
Dr. Gavin Jones, Research Ecologist, Rocky Mountain Research Station captures Mexican spotted owls as part of a GPS tagging study on Lincoln National Forest near Cloudcroft, New Mexico.
The Mexican spotted owl is a threatened species inhabiting forests and canyonlands in the southwestern United States. These owls often live in forests that are at high risk of stand-replacing fire – and yet at the same time, there is concern that fire risk reduction activities could remove or alter important habitat characteristics. It is critical to understand how these owl populations respond to different fire regimes to develop management and conservation strategies in an era of rapid change.
A collaborative group of scientists from the USDA Forest Service, the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigated the effects of both stand-replacing fire and other fire regimes that could be consistent with prescribed and managed wildfire on Mexican spotted owls in Arizona and New Mexico.
Using standardized detection and non-detection data of Mexican spotted owl breeding pairs collected from 2015 to 2022, the team found higher rates of owl pair occupancy at sites that experienced more frequent fires in the three decades prior to the initiation of our study. In contrast, they found lower rates of local persistence of owl pairs at sites that experienced more extensive high-severity fire during the study. This suggests that frequent, low-severity fire supported owl habitat, whereas high-severity fire was detrimental to owl habitat.
These results indicate that Mexican spotted owls responded to wildfire in a manner consistent with their evolutionary environment, as historical fire regimes throughout much of the study area were characterized by high fire frequencies and limited high-severity components. Land managers can use this information to guide actions that reduce the risk of stand-replacing fire and increase the application of prescribed fire in and around Mexican spotted owl habitat. Management activities such as prescribed burning and mechanical thinning that aim to reduce stand-replacing fire risk and re-introduce the potential for frequent-fire regimes will likely benefit Mexican spotted owl conservation objectives, as well as promote more resilient forest landscapes.