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Assessing the cocmpatibility of fuel treatments, wildfire risk, and conservation of Northern Spotted Owl habitats and populations in the eastern Cascades
Citation:
Kennedy, R. H., A. A. Ager, P. F. Hessburg, J. Lehmkuhl, B. G. Marcot, M. G. Raphael, N. H. SCHUMAKER, P. H. Singleton, AND T. A. Spies. Assessing the cocmpatibility of fuel treatments, wildfire risk, and conservation of Northern Spotted Owl habitats and populations in the eastern Cascades. Presented at 4th International Fire Ecology & Management Congress: Fire as a Global Process, Savannah, GA, November 30 - December 04, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
Land managers are faced with conundrum when tasked with maintaining populations of threatened Northern Spotted Owl (NSO; Strix occidentalis caurina) while reducing wildfire risk in dry, fire-prone forests of the inland northwest.
Description:
Land managers are faced with conundrum when tasked with maintaining populations of threatened Northern Spotted Owl (NSO; Strix occidentalis caurina) while reducing wildfire risk in dry, fire-prone forests of the inland northwest. The USDI Fish and Wildlife Service Final Recovery Plan (FRP; recently remanded) for the Northern Spotted Owl augments the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) late-successional reserves and calls for development of dynamic, shifting mosaics in dry forests, with retention of late successional reserves in moist forests of the eastern Cascades of Oregon and Washington. However, the desired spatial allocations and temporal dynamics have not been determined. We are developing and evaluating several management scenarios in the Okanogan-Wenatchee and Deschutes National Forests of eastern Washington and Oregon intended to conserve NSO habitat and reduce fire risk at stand and landscape scales. Our study is unique because it focuses not only on fire and fuels management effects on NSO habitat, but also on NSO populations, and influences of the Barred Own (BDOW) on the NSO. Our objectives are to: 1) quantify and map current large wildfire risk to NSO habitat and the spatial pattern of risk with respect to existing forest structure; 2) determine short-term effects of management compatible with the NWFP and local forest plans; and 3) characterize long-term potential dynamics in distribution of NSO habitat and populations under various fuel management and conservation design scenarios, for policymakers and managers. Our work provides innovative modeling procedures and results, maps showing areas most prone to large wildfire, examples of landscape vegetation and fuels management prescriptions to minimize likelihood of the largest fires, and maps and modeling predictions of habitat dynamics and probability of NSO persistence under different scenarios.