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Project ID: 06-3-4-15

Year: 2006

Date Started: 07/07/2006

Date Completed: 08/12/2009

Title: Modeling Habitat and Population Responses of At-Risk Woodpecker Species to Post-Fire Salvage Logging

Project Proposal Abstract: Public land managers face significant challenges when attempting to implement national fire policies and concurrently meet the requirements of existing laws to maintain habitats and populations of wildlife species associated with post-fire habitats. Fire creates dense stands of standing dead trees that provide habitat patches for a variety of wildlife, notably cavity-nesting birds. Several species of cavity-nesting woodpeckers are designated as species at risk because they are responsive to fire and timber management activities. In forested regions of the western United States, controversy over post-fire management activities (particularly salvage logging), frequently results in legal conflicts. Litigation over salvage logging often reflects the challenges faced by land mangers when attempting to legally demonstrate that habitat and populations are maintained for management indicator and sensitive species of wildlife. Standardized guidelines for conservation of postfire landscapes are not available. Currently, a wide variety of approaches are used for managing burned forests and they depend on land ownership and discretion of individual managers. Public land agencies need to develop and implement consistent design criteria for post-fire management on federal lands that will maintain habitats and populations of species at risk, notably cavity-nesting birds. Currently, managers cannot reliably evaluate expected responses by fire-associated wildlife across burned forests because we lack models linking wildlife populations to multi-scale forest conditions after post-fire salvage logging treatments. Our proposal seeks to evaluate the effects and effectiveness of post-fire management activities, namely salvage logging, on populations and habitats of at-risk woodpecker species dependent on burned forests (AFP 2006-3 Task 4). This proposal will allow completion of post-treatment salvage logging measurements where data were collected prior to logging at the Toolbox Fire in Oregon and it will provide data for validation of models on woodpecker nest occurrence developed from data collected in Idaho. The objectives of this study are to: (1) Develop regression models to assess the relative influence of post-fire salvage logging on nest survival and productivity (number of fledglings produced) of at-risk woodpecker species using dry forest habitats; (2) Evaluate the predictive ability of woodpecker nest occurrence models developed from data collected in Idaho by using observations in Oregon; (3) Quantify fuels reduction after post-fire salvage logging to assess the effects on wildlife habitat; and (4) Develop guidelines regarding the use of remotely-sensed pre-fire vegetation conditions and post-fire burn severity to predict habitat suitability of burned forests (e.g., patch area and configuration of snag habitats) for woodpeckers. The results of this study will provide the scientific information to quantify effects of post-fire management activities and determine locations within burned forests most likely to provide suitable habitat for fire-associated species. Our ongoing and proposed research provides a unique opportunity to contribute to the establishment of scientifically-based, legally-defensible guidelines for lessening the effects of post-fire management activities on biological resources and concurrently maintain habitat and populations of fire-associated woodpecker species.

Principal Investigator: Victoria A. Saab

Agency/Organization: Forest Service

Branch or Dept: RMRS-Southwest Forest Science Complex

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Co-Principal Investigator	Kim Mellen	Forest Service	Region 6-Pacific Northwest Region
Co-Principal Investigator	Jay Rotella	Montana State University	Department of Ecology
Federal Cooperator	Alison Hill	Forest Service	RMRS-Rocky Mountain Research Station

Project Locations

Consortium

Northern Rockies

Northwest

There are no project locations identified for this project.

Project Deliverables

Final Report ("Results presented in JFSP Final Reports may not have been peer-reviewed and should be interpreted as tentative until published in a peer-reviewed source.")

	ID	Type	Title
	7770	Refereed Publication	Habitat Suitability Models for Cavity-Nesting Birds in a Postfire Landscape
	8101	Refereed Publication	Detection Probabilities of Woodpecker Nests in Mixed Conifer Forests in Oregon
	8100	Refereed Publication	Nest-Site Selection by Cavity-Nesting Birds in Relation to Postfire Salvage Logging
	8099	Refereed Publication	Home Range Size of Black-Backed Woodpeckers in Burned Forests of Southwestern Idaho
	6352	Refereed Publication	Nest Densities of Cavity-Nesting Birds in Relation to Postfire Salvage Logging and Time Since Wildfire
	8102	MS Thesis	Influence of Postfire Salvage Logging on Black-Backed Woodpecker Nest-Site Selection and Nest Survival (C. Forristal)

Supporting Documents

The following supporting documents are available for this project.

Brief

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