Creating Stand-Level Prescriptions that Integrate Ecological and Fuel Management Objectives across the Eastern Cascades – a Workshop

The primary goal of this workshop was to develop a range of fuel reduction prescriptions that integrate fuel and ecological objectives specifically related to northern spotted owl (NSO) conservation in dry forests of the Cascade Range in eastern Washington and Oregon and northern California. The workshop was held at the Eagle Crest Resort, Redmond, Oregon, from October 13-15, 2009. Over 200 managers and scientists attended from California, Oregon, and Washington. Most (82%) of the 194 people who formally registered for the workshop worked for federal land management, research, or regulatory agencies. The rest were a mix of university faculty and graduate students (7%), representatives of private non-governmental groups (6%), staff from state resource or wildlife agencies (3%), and staff of tribal governments (2%). Most registrants were from Oregon (63%), followed by California (19%) and Washington (17%). We attracted a mix of managers and scientists. Wildlife biologists made up 40% of the registrants, followed by silviculturists (24%) and fire specialists (14%). Many people professed primary or secondary expertise in botany, ecology, forest health (entomology, pathology), or planning. The workshop began in the first afternoon with presentations on the scientific basis for dry-forest management and current management and ecological objectives and issues. The second full day was devoted to defining stand management objectives, learning about current management efforts in the region, and two group exercises to define objectives and treatment strategies. The AM of the last day started with 2 hours of discussion of the previous afternoon’s break-out discussions. Two talks on landscape planning followed. A final talk discussed options to best implement, test, and improve on the workshop outcomes. An adaptive management template and regional study network were proposed. The PM of the last day was a field trip to Pringle Falls Experimental Forest attended by about 100 people. A consensus developed that prescriptions most likely to successfully integrate ecological and fuel-management objectives in both mixed-conifer and pine-dominated forests should be based on emulating historic distributions of forest patch and gap sizes. Both scientists and field managers are anxious to participate in a coordinated management study network, recognizing this approach as the most efficient means for gaining reliable information. Key information needs include answers to the questions: (1) How do NSOs respond to different levels of dry forest treatment in both the short and long term?; and, (2) What methods (marking, logging systems, etc.) are most effective at producing the desired pattern of spatial heterogeneity within and among stands? The workshop results and networking will feature strongly in several ongoing research, management, and science delivery efforts across the region. Final Report JFSP 09-S-01-5 3 Background and Purpose The workshop goal was to initiate a long-term (10-year) program of collaboration between managers and scientists to rapidly accelerate the development of effective and ecologically sound dry forest management in the eastern Cascade Range. In addition to restoration of stable fire regimes and ecological conditions, the program and its results on the ground aimed to promote recovery of the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO), as described in the Northwest Forest Plan (1994) and the NSO Recovery Plan (2008). The workshop and subsequent program are sanctioned by the interagency Eastern Cascades Dry Forest Landscape Working Group formed under the NSO Recovery Plan and lead by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This workshop continued efforts begun during workshops in Redmond, OR, (2005), Ashland, OR, (2006), and Wenatchee, WA (2007) that brought together fuel specialists, silviculturists, and wildlife biologists to discuss and develop integrated landscape and standlevel management strategies and practices. The workshop focused specifically on several stand-level needs and recommendations from earlier workshops:  Better integrate NSO, prey, silviculture and fire objectives.  Provide prescription and implementation guidelines for managers.  Develop implementation strategies.  Link scientists and managers to understand shortand long-term treatment impacts through monitoring and research.  Hold future workshops to continue the dialogue. The workshop addressed long-standing and current issues related to fire and fuel management practices in Late-Successional Reserves and Matrix Forest under the Northwest Forest Plan. The workshop also directly addressed Recovery Actions in the 2008 Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl. Recovery Action 6 requires the maintenance and restoration of high-quality NSO habitat. Recovery Action 7 describes habitat management outside high-quality owl habitat as: intensive management to protect highquality habitat, and management to reduce fire risk while maintaining the capacity for rapid development of, and eventual replacement of, high-quality owl habitat. Both recovery actions will require novel silvicultural and fuel treatment approaches to restore, protect, or develop owl habitat, and to manage for overall dry forest integrity. The need for novel prescriptions is all the more urgent considering the uncertain effects of climate change on forest development under passive or active conventional management. Integral to the proposed program will be implementation of Recovery Action 10 (restoration of habitat elements like snags) and Recovery Action 11 (design and conduct experiments). This workshop focused on stand-level management practices as the building blocks for landscape management. Landscape planning issues and methods were discussed briefly for context and will be the topic for a future workshop. The workshop aimed to promote interagency coordination and collaboration across the Eastern Cascades region. Regional adaptive management studies that include coordination of silvicultural practices, implementation strategies, and monitoring design and implementation will lead to rapid, consistent, and reliable development of effective Final Report JFSP 09-S-01-5 4 management practices. In the absence of a coordinated effort, progress toward NSO recovery and ecosystem management of dry forests will be slow, haphazard, and uncertain. The alternative to our organized approach for effective management is a hodge-podge of unconnected efforts that treat many acres, but from which we learn little about the effectiveness or validity of our actions for forest health and species conservation. The series of workshops described above has provided a forum for sharing information and promoting improved interdisciplinary communication, which has been useful, but we expect coordinated adaptive management will more effectively accelerate the pace of learning while doing.