CASPO Benefits From Rx Fire

Yet another interesting link from Nick Smith…. This is from Audubon. This has been said many times here on TSW: Yes, Rx fire burns up accumulated fuels, but you can’t have an Rx fire with high fuel loads — see below. Trigger warning <grin>: mentions managed wildfire.

Fire Is a Major Threat to California Spotted Owls—but Could it Also Help Save Them?

Excerpt:

Wildfire is nothing new in California. In recent years, though, the blazes have taken on increased severity and reshaped the landscape. As more of their home turf transforms, California Spotted Owls—dark-eyed, mottled-brown raptors living in the state’s central and southern forests—have been feeling that heat: Destructive megafires burned more of their habitat in 2020 and 2021 alone than in the previous 35 years. Experts say these growing disasters represent the most urgent threat to the birds.

Recognizing this mounting menace—along with other, intertwined hazards such as climate change and drought—the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) last year announced plans to give the birds Endangered Species Act protections.

Yet the California Spotted Owl’s best hope, counterintuitively, may also lie in fire. Research increasingly suggests that lower-severity burning—which burns up accumulated fuels but can leave many larger trees intact—not only inoculates many drier forests against destructive megafires, but also creates the mosaic of habitat types that the birds gravitate toward. “It really depends on how it burns,” says Gavin Jones, a U.S. Forest Service wildlife ecologist. “In general, these owls like fire.”

….

The USFWS listing decision “recommends more thinning of the owl’s forests. Though critics contend thinning sometimes offers timber companies a pretext for cutting big trees, research shows that clearing dense brush and selectively logging, when combined with intentional fire, can create the patchwork structure that benefits owls while also reducing fire severity.” [emphasis mine]