Discussion
Let us know what you think about any topic related to the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project in the forums below. The Principal Investigators on the UC Science Team cannot answer every post, but they will read all comments in our their areas, and respond to comments as a group at each quarterly meeting. We greatly value your input!
Having just heard from the USFS Regional Forester yesterday that the next round of forest planning will make fisher habitat an issue for all the Sierran national forests, I'd like to challenge the SNAMP science team to be very clear about the ages as well as the sizes and species of forest components in the southern SNAMP site.
The need for such accuracy hit home earlier this week while Harry & I were watching KVIE's "California's Gold" TV program on the Yosemite Sugar Pine Railroad. The operator said 30,000 acres were clearcut in the vicinity of the railroad between 1899 and 1931. Photos showing the landscape backed up the characterization of clearcutting. There's no way the habitats where fishers are being studied in SNAMP classify as "old growth."
Also, I'd like to suggest to all agencies participating in SNAMP that, given the fisher mortality data obtained so far, a roadside signage program and lower speed limit on Hwy 41 similar to the bear signs & speed limits now being deployed in Yosemite might be in order for fishers. Thanks.
After the SNAMP Annual meeting in November 2008, the issue of identifying
private landownership and obtaining permission to access private lands by the
owl science team was raised. The importance of obtaining permission to survey on
private lands was agreed upon, as well as needing to know the types and amounts
of activities that occur on private lands within owl territories so that the owl
team can account for it in their modeling.
Since the November meeting, the owl team has obtained current, private landowner
spatial data from Placer and El Dorado County Assessors Offices for both the
Last Chance Owl Study Area and the El Dorado Study Area (ESA). The largest,
private landowner in the ESA is Lone Star Timber; managed by Mason, Bruce &
Girard, Inc. Representatives of Mason, et al have worked with the owl team to
supply them with spatial data for timber harvests conducted on Lone Star Timber
lands for 2007 and 2008. Obtaining spatial data for subsequent years, after the
conclusion of each year’s activity, should be forthcoming. The owl team has also
requested spatial data for timber harvests on SPI land and is awaiting a
response.
Generally, the owl team does not have the need to access private lands as owl territories have been found on Forest Service lands. However, upon review of the landowner spatial data, the owl team found one owl territory in the ESA that is located on SPI land. In addition, an owl was detected last summer in Last Chance on the border of SPI and Lone Star lands. Further surveying this summer will be necessary to determine if this is a legitimate territory. The owl team has obtained permission from Mason, et al to surveying on Lone Star land at this location and has requested permission to survey on SPI land at both locations. The owl team has offered to share all data with the landowners. Procedures have been put in place for obtaining access permission for any future owl territories that may be located on private lands.
Thanks Linda, I thought I'd just follow up on that one aspect of your comment "Using aerial photos and LIDAR, can't both public and private lands be roughly classified remotely"...
You are correct, in theory both public and private land could be mapped using remote sensing technology (given that we had all the imagery and lidar data we wanted), but all remote sensing products need to be validated by representative ground data. If management between private and public are different, we'd need to make sure we had representative samples from both public and private lands. I'd also like to reiterate that the SNAMP project doesn't have Lidar data for the Eldorado area due to the prohibitive costs of acquisition.
In response to the comments of Steve Self and Linda Blum on December 1:
ACCESS TO PRIVATE LANDS ON THE EDSA:
In the early 1990s, an industrial landowner on the EDSA did not want the owl
crews to survey along or travel on roads through their land. The Georgetown
District Ranger met with the private landowner and pointed out that the USFS
maintains many roads that allow private landowners to access their land within
the matrix of public and private lands. Without USFS cooperation, private
landowners would incur greater expenses to access their land and may even be
unable to access some areas. His discussion with the landowner apparently
convinced everyone that it was not in the best interest of all parties to argue
about who should be on private or public roads within the EDSA during legitimate
management or research activities. Almost exclusively, however, we do not
access private land per se but simply stay on roads to conduct our surveys. On
occasion, we do cross from public land onto private land when following owls if
there are no boundary markers obvious to field crews. This cannot be helped
because these owl chases generally occur in the dark or relatively far from
roads where identifying markers are extremely difficult to detect or do not
exist at all.
In summary, it appears by historical precedent that we can travel roads passing through private land if the road connects two parcels of public land. We do not bypass gated roads blocking access to private land without first obtaining permission from landowners. However, we respect private land and do not access such land without permission (i.e., don't leave a through road to access private land if we know it is private land). To conduct morning and evening “walk-in” surveys, we currently have no need to access private land because all owl roost and nest sites are currently on public land. When we have had a specific mission to access private land (e.g., find a radio-marked owl, locate a nest, or to conduct an experiment), we have always sought specific permission to access the land. In summary, we believe that our activities over the past 22 years have been consistent with the desire of private landowners to maintain the integrity of their land.
INFORMATION ON PRIVATE LANDOWNERS: We have recently acquired information on private land ownership from the Placer County Assessor’s Office and are converting it into a shapefile for GIS analysis. All of the Last Chance Study Area and most of the EDSA are located within Placer County. A portion of the EDSA is located in El Dorado County. To obtain land ownership information from the El Dorado County Assessor’s Office, we will need to visit their office in Placerville and we plan on doing so when we resume field work in the area during spring 2009. Again, we note that the identity of landowners is not central to the analysis, only that we know the types and amount of activity that occur within owl territories so that we account for it in our modeling.
Within the EDSA, Lone Star Timber Properties is the primary private landowner. We contacted the company that manages Lone Star’s property and are hopeful that they will provide timber harvest information during the SNAMP study. We will contact other private landowners as needed once we determine which landowners own land near owl territory centers. If we can not obtain information directly from private landowners, we will use information derived from Timber Harvest Plans that have been filed with CDF (as noted in our previous post).
In response to Ms. Blum’s question on December 1, a former graduate student of RJG created a EDSA habitat map in 2004-05 using aerial photos. We also plan to use aerial photos to create a habitat map for the Last Chance Study Area and to update both maps over the course of the SNAMP study. Unfortunately, LiDAR data would be prohibitively expensive to acquire for the entire EDSA. However, there are typically time gaps of 3-4 years between available aerial photos. Thus, we will require more detailed information from landowners or THPs to identify the specific years that various harvest activities have occurred within owl territories in order to evaluate the status of forests within each owl territory.
Thanks to the Owl Team for their responses.
If it were important to identify private landowners, one could easily get ownership information from the El Dorado County Tax Assessor's Office by looking up parcel numbers and tax information. I agree, though, that the more important point is recognition that the private lands in the checkerboard of the "control" owl sites are not "no action" control sites.
Accounting for habitat changes on those lands in the interpretation of study results may not be as problematic as first thought. Didn't Seamans, Bond, and/or others already classify timber strata in the study area for the 2004 paper on modelling nesting habitat? Using aerial photos and LIDAR, can't both public and private lands be roughly classified remotely?
It is good to see that the owl team has become aware of their mis-information regarding private land ownership within the Eldorado Demographic Study Area (EDSA). However, in this response, there is no mention of the need to obtain permission from landowners in order to access private land. This is an important issue to Sierra Pacific Industries and other private landowners. Other than use of public roads, access to private land is by permission only. To date In the EDSA, this has not been a large issue for SPI as we own very little land within the study area, Hopefully, as landowners are contacted for information regarding forest management activities during the SNAMP study period, permission to access the lands will be obtained, as needed.
Owl Team Response to Linda Blum's comments of November 9:
PRIVATE LAND OWNERSHIP ON ELDORADO STUDY AREA: There are two aspects of our response. First, private land constitutes about 37% of the Eldorado Density Owl Study Area. The Owl Science Team had been under the mistaken impression that most of this private land was owned by Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI). After being alerted to our possible error by Ms. Blum, our preliminary inquiries indicate that she is correct. Much of the private land may actually belong to Fruit Growers Association. Our assumption that most of the private land belonged to SPI had its genesis by the large land transactions that occurred within this region during the 1990s when the major private landowners were Fruit Growers, MichCal, SPI and others. RJG was told during a field site visit with Fruit Growers that they were in the process, along with MichCal, of liquidating their land to SPI. RJG simply assumed that was true, but apparently the transactions never occurred. We have recently requested detailed information on private land ownership within the Eldorado National Forest from agency personnel, and we will provide an update once we obtain this information. RJG never pursued the veracity of this information because specific land ownership was not of central relevance to our study objectives (see next comment). Second, although we appreciate Ms. Blum’s attention to detail and pointing out our error in terms of land ownership, the topic is not relevant from a scientific perspective or the design of the SNAMP study. In our recollection, we have never noted in any publication the explicit land ownership by a company, corporation, or individual on our study area except perhaps in general statements. Rather, we simply have noted that our study area is 37% private (this percentage may vary slightly in our historical publications because of changing land ownership patterns or as we acquire better information) and that the distribution of public and private land is in a “checkerboard” pattern, which is roughly true, but not geometrically true.
"CONTROL" VS. "TREATMENT" TERRITORIES: When the Owl Science Team refers to “control” and “treatment” territories, it implies the expectation that the owl territory will either experience a fuels reduction treatment executed by the U.S. Forest Service (“treatment”) or not receive one (“control”). This designation has nothing to do with the distribution of landownership or the past harvest or forest conditions (although this can be considered in the modeling of treatment effects). We use this terminology because our stated research questions are directed toward estimating the effects of SPLATs on spotted owls. At the November 5 meeting, DT stressed the importance of documenting private timber harvests within all of the owl territories, regardless of their designation as “control” or “treatment” territories. We stressed this because we recognize the potentially important confounding factor of “control” territories receiving “treatments” by private landowners and of “treatment” territories receiving multiple treatments (both USFS and private timber harvest within an owl territory). Therefore, we are in agreement with Ms. Blum that the effects of private timber harvest on spotted owl habitat represents a potentially important confounding factor, and thus we plan to incorporate data on private timber harvest into our analyses. We plan to contact the actual private landowners on our study area (once we determine their identity) and request information on the locations, size, and types of harvest (clearcut, selective removal, etc.) conducted during the course of our study. If we cannot obtain this information directly from a private landowner, we will obtain the information from Timber Harvest Plans on file with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Our approach will be to model SPLAT treatments so that the treatment will be considered both a categorical (owl territory receives a treatment or not) and a continuous (owl territory receives a specific amount of treatment) effect.
HYPOTHESES/TIME SCALE OF STUDY: The Owl Team does not have a premise that the Framework will be detrimental to the owls. It is one working hypothesis that SPLATs could have a negative effect, but the alternative is also possible given our lack of understanding of owl responses to these treatments at the current time. Finally, we wish to clarify the time scale of the owl SNAMP study, as this may be another source of confusion for Ms. Blum. While current forest conditions on our study landscape have been greatly influenced by historic timber harvests (on both public and private lands), our study objective is not to assess the effects of past activities on spotted owls, but to assess the effects of activities that occur during the course of the SNAMP study (2007−2013). Thus, we will create a habitat map to quantify forest conditions at the beginning of the study. At the study’s conclusion, we will update the habitat map, which will allow us to quantify any habitat change that occurred during the study. Although we are specifically interested in habitat change due to Forest Service SPLATs, we will control for habitat change due to other reasons (private timber harvest, wildfire) as noted above. In addition, we will undoubtedly consider the habitat conditions of each territory prior to their receiving any treatment because owl territories having different starting conditions might respond differently to SPLAT treatments.
Linda, thank you for this question and your ongoing interest in SNAMP. We apologize for the delay in response from the UCST. Please know that Rocky is working on a response and hopes to get back to you as soon as he is able. Please contact Kim Rodrigues directly with any immediate concerns you may have related to this matter.
Kim Rodrigues
karodrigues@ucdavis.edu
I'd like to correct a misimpression that was cast in last Wednesday's SNAMP meeting in Sacramento. It was reported that the Eldorado Spotted Owl Density Study Area includes a "checkerboard" land ownership pattern that intermixes national forest and Sierra Pacific Industries timberlands.
I came home from the meeting and checked with a QLG member who works for SPI, and he confirmed that the private lands in the Eldorado density study area do not belong to SPI, except perhaps 2,000 acres in the northeast corner of the 87,000-acre Density Study Area.
I find it odd that the "control" owl sites in this study lie on the
checkerboarded lands, where literally half the landscape is and has been
actively harvested for a long time.
The premise of the SNAMP owl study is that habitat alterations caused by 2004 Framework timber harvests/fuels treatments will be detrimental to spotted owls. Yet the "control" landscape is one that has a population of owls spread across it, studied by Dr. Gutierrez and his bands of itinerant wildlife biologists (and I salute you all!) for two decades or more, checkerboarding and timber harvests included.
During last Wednesday's discussion circle, someone asked how the study would account for the effects of activities that have been or are occurring on the private timberlands in the checkerboard. I would suggest that Doug Tempel's slideshow map of owl treatment territories and owl control territories offers a starting point for the answer: the cumulative effects so far have resulted in a well-distributed breeding population spaced such that individuals are capable of intermixing.
Maybe I don't understand the control concept in this application. Can someone please clarify?
Dear Linda,
Thanks for your question, and yes, we are aware of the extensive logging that occurred throughout the Fisher Project study area and in Yosemite NP in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The legacy of the logging that occurred here is very apparent from the many old tree stumps, rusty and partially buried cables, and grown over logging roads in the area. Importantly, however, the forest has regrown in the intervening years and large areas of the Bass Lake Ranger District include large diameter, 2nd growth timber approaching 80-100 yrs in age. Although not “old growth” forest per se, these “mature forest” habitats include many of the features that fishers require including relatively high aboveground biomass, closed canopy conditions (>50-60% canopy cover), and the presence of large trees and snags with cavities that provide both rest sites and den sites. When discussing forest conditions important for fishers in our presentations, we note that fishers prefer mature and old growth forest habitats. We will be careful to explain that the fisher habitat in our study area is not “old growth” forest.
Regarding your comment on fisher mortalities, at our most recent Fisher Integration Meeting in Fresno on July 15, 2009, we discussed the multiple different sources of mortality now documented for fishers in the Sierra National Forest. Vehicle strikes (roadkills) are an important source of mortality for fishers in the project area, but especially in southwestern Yosemite NP. The speed limit in the area of the park where fishers are being killed on the Wawona Road/Hwy 41 is currently 35 mph. The speed limit along Hwy 41 just south of the park boundary is also 35 mph. Unfortunately not all motorists obey the speed limit, and it is difficult for drivers to see these darkly colored animals on the highway at night when they are out foraging. It is possible that some combination of reduced speed limits, better enforcement, and appropriate signs like those used for bears in Yosemite NP may help mitigate the problem.