Treesearch

The Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex Recreation Management Direction was approved in April 1987. Monitoring of recreational use has focused on encounters with other parties, the number of campsites impacted, and number of aircraft landings at Schafer Meadows airstrip. The available monitoring information indicates standards are being met for encountering other parties, but that the number of impacted sites, and aircraft landings during some periods, exceeded limits. The primary management tool to reduce recreational use impacts is through encouraging Leave No Trace camping practices....

Implementation of the LAC within politicized contexts requires that managers/planners involve the public in ways significantly different from the traditional rational-comprehensive paradigm of natural resource planning. In politicized contexts, the lack of clear agreement about goals and disagreement among scientists about cause-effect relationships requires planning to be collaborative and learning oriented. LAC makes the value-laden nature of protected area management decisions explicit; involving the public ensures that the variety of values involved are revealed. Transactive planning...

The status and habitats of Neotropical migratory land birds (NTMB) are evaluated within the interior Columbia River basin (interior basin). Objectives are to examine population trends, estimate NTMB responses to alternative management activities, and provide recommendations by habitat and species for the long-term persistence of NTMB populations. Among 132 NTMBs that breed in the interior basin, 38 species showed significant population trends over two time periods, 1968-94 (26 years), and 1984-94 (10 years). Fourteen species had significant declines over the 26-year period and 13 over the...

Experience with Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) and related planning processes has accumulated since the mid-1980's. These processes were developoed as a means of dealing with recreation carrying capacity issues in wilderness and National Parks. These processes clearly also have application outside of protected areas and to issues other than recreation management. This proceedings represents and attempt to learn from that experience and suggest means of increasing the future utility of these processes.

A strategy for using fire to manage for biological diversity on native rangelands in the Northern Great Plains incorporates an understanding of its past frequency, timing and intensity. Historically, lightning and humans were the major fire setters, and the role of fire varied both in space and time. A burning regime that includes fires at various intervals, seasons and intensities, including midsummer burns, should be reinstated. However, burning to enhance rare systems and species and to discourage exotic species is also needed. The goal is to base plans on an understanding of historic...

These proceedings are the result of a symposium, "Conserving biodiversity on native rangelands" held on August 17, 1995 in Fort Robinson State Park, NE. The purpose of this symposium was to provide a forum to discuss how elements of rangeland biodiversity are being conserved today. We asked, "How resilient and sustainable are rangeland systems to the increasing demands of a growing human population and to extended periods of drought?" Key programs and issues, identified by a program committee, were addressed by researchers and managers. Their papers provide research results, management...

Greater prairie chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus) populations and habitats have declined dramatically in the Great Plains. The Sheyenne National Grassland (SNG) has the largest population of greater prairie chickens in North Dakota, but this population has declined over the past 15 years. Lack of nesting habitat has been identified as a significant factor contributing to the decline in greater prairie chicken populations throughout their range. We used the Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) model for greater prairie chickens to evaluate the nesting habitat conditions on the SNG. This...

The black-tailed prairie dog is one of five prairie dog species estimated to have once occupied up to 100 million ha or more in North America. The area occupied by black-tailed prairie dogs has declined to approximately 2% of its former range. Conversion of habitat to other land uses and widespread prairie dog eradication efforts combined with sylvatic plague, Yersinia pestis, have caused significant reductions. Although, the species itself is not in imminent jeopardy of extinction, its unique ecosystem is jeopardized by continuing fragmentation and isolation.

The Rocky Mountain Region of the USDA Forest Service provides nesting habitat for 146 species of neotropical migratory birds. Interactive, prioritization databases were developed for each National Forest and National Grassland in the Region to assist land managers in making informed decisions about resource allocations. The data was processed using Paradox software. This paper summarizes the uses and application of the database for the Oglala and Ft. Pierre National Grasslands.

To provide information on comparative habitat use, we studied radiotagged Mexican spotted owls (Strix occidentalis lucida: n = 13) and great horned owls (Bubo virginianus: n = 4) in northern Arizona. Home-range size (95% adaptive kernel estimate) did not differ significantly between species during either the breeding or nonbreeding season. Home ranges overlapped considerably between species, but overlap in use of individual stands was limited. Relative area of 4 canopy-cover classes (