Land Management Through Prescribed Fire

Land management through prescribed fire is a beneficial method of maintaining suitable habitat for native wildlife. Advance research and monitoring the results of these management actions are important in assessing the success of fire management strategies. In the past, fire suppression on Reserve lands has greatly increased fuel levels (the amount of dead leaves and branches that could easily be ignited under proper conditions). Current policy encourages the reduction of fuels through prescribed fire, thinning or other means. Little information is available, however, on the habitat that remains after a burn, and the short- and long-term suitability of the postburn habitat to resident wildlife. Integrating wildlife habitat information into fuel inventories and models provides an ecologically-based framework to describe species diversity and abundance resulting from fire suppression and reestablishment of those historic fire regimes.


Integrated Monitoring Program

Fire management at the Reserve includes monitoring the relationship of fuel loads to habitat quality for resident wildlife species within different habitat areas. This work involves an integrated monitoring program that:

1. records the quantity and quality of the fuel loads in different vegetation types among burn units;
2. identifies the types and numbers of resident wildlife species using the habitat;
3. measures habitat quality by relating wildlife diversity and abundance to available fuel structure;
4. evaluates direct and indirect effects of fuels management on wildlife habitat; and,
5. predicts the short- and long-term effects of fuels management on habitat structure and associated quantity and quality of habitat for resident wildlife species.

Because different fuel loads burn at different temperatures, a variety of surveying techniques can be used to measure the degree of fire intensity. These include photo point comparisons, fuel level samples and the use of temperature sensitive paint. Standard capture-and-release animal trapping methods and vegetation transects are used to quantify habitat and animal populations. Pre- and postburn monitoring of biological indicator species is instrumental in measuring the effects of fire on habitat structure and its use by associated wildlife species.