# Presentation: 754903

## Strategic Environmental Compliance for Fire Safe Council & Community Wildfire Protection Plan Projects 

**Project Scope and Conservation Strategies:**
**Wildlife and Vegetation Community Considerations**
**Kevin Shaffer**
**Department of Fish and Game**
**(916) 651-7806**
**.****kshaffer@dfg.ca.gov**

## Basic assumptions

- Each of the components of fire regime is significant to animals.
- The interaction between wildlife and fire, including the implications of altered regimes or fire and fuel management practices, may be best understood when viewing individual fire regime attributes and their particular effects on animals.
**temporal,**
**spatial**, and
**magnitude**
- of a _**fire or project**_ all influence, plants, animals, and habitat.

**Important Questions**
- What means of reducing fuel are available that do not impact species or at least minimize the effects?
- What is the role of fire in restoring, enhancing, or simply maintaining the ecological integrity of a landscape so that the native animals and plants dependent on that landscape may be viable into the future?
**Related Question**
- How does controlling invasive species affect native species?

## Defining your goals and Planning Capacity

**Wildfire Protection**
**Reduced Fire intensity**
**Reduced rate of spread**
**Width of break or buffer**
**Crew/equipment access during incidents**
**Duration of reduced risk**
**other**

**Project capacity**
**Planning phase (included consultation with wildlife experts and permit compliance)**
**Intended implementation**
**Timing**
**Area/scope**
**Equipment**
**Staffing**
**Finances**
***Partners***

## Potential effects of a project

**Fire ecology**
**Out of season**
**Increasing frequency**
**Exclusion of fire**
**Biological**
- Species displacement
- Reduced productivity
- Reduced fecundity
*mortality*

**Ecological**
- Loss of soil
- Increase in sediment
- Change in community composition or structure
- Change in hydrology- storage, flow; timing; amount; recharge

## What do wildlife need?

- Ecological transitions
- Environmental cycling
- Different geographies
- Migration/emigration
- Foraging
- Breeding and rearing
*Escape*

## What do wildlife need?

- Alterations to the landscape- immediate, annual, intermediate, permanent
**Hydrology**
**Geomorphology/soils**
**Vegetation**
**Species composition**
**Distribution [movement, nesting, cover**
**Size- and age-**
**Physical structure and components [snags, downed wood, nest platforms, escape- & hunting-routes]**
**Production [primary, seeds, foliage, bark/sap, insects, detritus, fungi, N]**

## What do wildlife need?

- Requirements based on time of year
- Requirements based of on life-stage
- Requirements based on population use of area
- Requirements based on **current**, altered, and preferred condition

## Potential conflicts between mechanical fuel reduction and protection of at-risk species

**Timing (seasonal)**
**Level of complexity and detail**
**Scope (spatial)**
**Re-entry for further treatment**
**Techniques:**
**Fuel buffer**
**Fuel break**
**Shaded fuel break**

**Feasibility to do project and attaining desired results versus impacting crucial aspect of species life cycle**
**Affordability, time required to conduct treatment, level of personnel needed versus planning for the special needs and variety of species involved**
**a. Attaining a lower risk versus or b. accomplishing what is feasible versus treating an area large enough to a. represent a threat or b. attaining enough reduction to allow fire to play a future role**
**the need for additional or continual treatment versus a. repeated stress on species or b. fire not being used in the future**
**The height needed for effect versus impacts to plants and animal habitat**
**Exposure of soil and elimination of plants and animal habitat; potential disturbance to animal home range or migration; stimulation of invasive plant species**
**Removal of habitat elements; fundamental alteration of vegetation community; disturbance of migration corridors, cover, or shelter**

## Examples of fuel treatment and habitat and species conservation

- Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve, southern Riverside County-
- Mechanical treatment of vegetation & prescribed burning
- Western Riverside County Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan
- Mechanical treatment of vegetation
- Channel Island National Park System
-  Mechanical treatment of vegetation, prescribed burning, control of invasive plant species
- U.C. Davis Jepson Prairie Reserve, Solano County
- Mechanical treatment of vegetation, prescribed burning, control of invasive plant species
- Pine Hills Preserve, El Dorado County
- Mechanical treatment & some prescribed fire

## Wildlife~habitat~project planning tools

**Fire Effects Information System (FEIS), http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/index.html**
- FEIS provides up-to-date information about fire effects on 900 plant species, 7 lichen species, about 100 wildlife species plants and animals. It is maintained at USFS’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana. Emphasis: how fire affects species. Information: taxonomy, distribution, basic biology, and ecology of each species, complete bibliography.
**California Wildlife Habitat Relationships (CWHR), http://www.dfg.ca.gov/bdb/html/cwhr.html**
- State-of-the-art information system for California's wildlife.  CWHR contains life history, geographic range, habitat relationships, and management information on 692 species of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals known to occur in the state.
**California Natural Diversity Database (CNDDB) **
-  is a program that inventories the status and locations of rare plants and animals in California . CNDDB staff work with partners to maintain current lists of rare species as well as maintain an ever-growing database of GIS-mapped locations for these species.
**RareFind 3 ©**     *The most complete computerized inventory of California's rarest species and natural communities available!*  **http://www.dfg.ca.gov/bdb/html/rarefind.html**
- contains over 49,000 records on more than 2,600 rare native plants, animals, and natural communities in a convenient, searchable database.  Offering all textual data associated with the Department of Fish and Game's California Natural Diversity Database, RareFind 3 can either be used as a stand-alone research tool or linked with GIS software such as Arcview or Arcmap for greater flexibility.
**Fire in California's Ecosystems**, http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10085.html
- Edited by Neil G. Sugihara, Jan W. van Wagtendonk, Kevin E. Shaffer, Jo Ann Fites-Kaufman and Andrea E. Thode.  U.C. Press, 2006

## Partners!

- Working both with agencies and organizations that (1) protect wildlife and permit for the incidental take of species of protected species and (2) are experienced with manipulating vegetation and conducting prescribed fire greatly enhances the potential to conduct fuel/fire projects and conducting them successfully.
- Wildlife expertise can assist with evaluating potential species present, potential listed species present, important habitat elements, and vegetation communities.
- Fire ecology expertise (i.e, BLM, NPS, USGS, USFS) can assist with evaluating current fire regime and potential changes in regime elements based on project design and implementation.
- Fire management expertise can assist with developing project options to altering vegetation for project goals.
- Regulatory agencies (both wildlife and fire management) can assist in evaluating the permits necessary, potential timelines, and coordination necessary for project design.
**The partnership of project proponent, appropriate wildlife & regulatory agencies, and advising or partnering fire management agencies is the best opportunity in avoiding & minimizing impacts, stream-lining project process, and potentially meeting mutual goals.**
- _Recommendation:_**  Design project goals to integrate as much as possible with habitat function, species needs, and fire regime in mind.**
- _Recommendation:_**  Design your project in collaboration with and input from fire ecologists and wildlife biologists as early as possible & practical.**

## California Department of Fish and Game Regional Offices

|   | 1 - Northern Region   Serving Del Norte, Humboldt, Lassen, Mendocino, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama and Trinity counties    (530) 225-2300  |
| --- | --- |
|   | 2 - North Central Region   Serving Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, El Dorado, Glenn, Lake, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Sierra, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties    
(916) 358-2900 |
|   | 3 - Bay Delta Region   Serving Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, Sacramento, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, San Joaquin, Solano, Sonoma, and Yolo counties(707) 944-5500 |
|   | 4 - Central Region   Serving Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Stanislaus, Tulare and Tuolumne counties    (559) 243-4005 |
|   | 5 - South Coast Region   Serving Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties   (858) 467-4201 |
|   | 6 - Inland Deserts Region   Serving Imperial, Inyo, Mono, Riverside and San Bernardino counties   
(909) 484-0167  |

**Questions?**