Spotted Owl Nesting Habitat Projected to Double

[Line Graph]: The numbers of acres of spotted owl nesting habitat is expected to increase in the next 80 years, from just over 10,000 acres in 1995 to almost 25,000 acres in 2080.

Thinning in strategic sites acts as "speed bumps" for runaway wildfires.

[Map]: A close-up topographic view of a forest area with eleven outlined sites for strategically placed thinning projects that would act as speed bumps for runaway wildfires.

[Photograph]: A spotted owl in natural forest conditions.

[Photograph]: A pine marten in natural forest conditions. Copyright protected, reuse by permission only.

[Photograph]: A willow flycatcher in natural forest conditions.

[Photograph]: A northern goshawk in natural forest conditions.

Protect wildlife in the Sierra Nevada

Sierra Nevada wildlife in danger

Fire has always been a natural part of the forest ecosystem. In the past, the Sierra Nevada forests were far less packed with vegetation than they are today. Fires were frequent, low, and slow. Wildlife had a fighting chance. In fact, wildlife thrived.

But fire suppression practices over the last century have allowed a dangerous buildup of brush and densely-crowded small-to-medium trees. Overgrown forests allow disease and insects to attack, leaving trees dead, dry, and prone to ignite. This crowding of fuel allows flames to climb and spread from tree to tree in a catastrophic phenomenon known as a "crown fire". No living thing, animal or plant, can survive such fires.

[Illustration]: Two forest conditions showing how forest density affects fire behavior. The first condition shows a crown fire burning hot, fast and high because the fuel ladder is intact. The second forest condition, where the fuel ladder has been removed, depicts a fire burning slow and low to the ground, leaving the tree crowns unburned.

Catastrophic fires have increased dramatically over the past three decades, destroying critical habitat for spotted owls, great gray owls, willow flycatchers, northern goshawk, plus many furbearers and other threatened or endangered animal species.

Our forests, and the wildlife they shelter, are in crisis.

[Line Graph]: A dramatic increase in acres burned by catastrophic wildfires since 1950, from approximately 2,500 acres per year in 1950 to 15,000 acres per year in 2000.

Approximately 7.5 million acres in the eleven Sierra Nevada national forests are estimated to have dangerously high levels of fire hazard. This vast landscape encompasses some 550 vertebrate animal species alone, of which 30 are threatened or endangered. Wildfire loss of protected spotted owl areas now averages 4.5 sites per year.

We must better protect these wildlife habitats from catastrophic wildfires.

What can be done?

The forests With A Future Campaign will use the best scientific information available to adapt and apply methods to preserve wildlife, old growth trees, and local communities from catastrophic wildfires.

This Forest Service campaign initiates an intensified program of tree thinning and removal of underbrush at strategic sites. Though the campaign thins only a small percentage of the forest, these sites will benefit the entire forest's wildlife habitat, acting as "speed bumps" to slow the spread of catastrophic wildfires.

Methods of controlled and monitored burning, and mechanical removal, will be used to thin forests and preserve habitats.

The campaign maintains livestock grazing guidelines to protect wildlife habitat and allows site-specific grazing decisions in other areas, which will be closely monitored.

The campaign also includes accelerated restoration of ecosystems destroyed by wildfire.

Restoring nature's balance

Reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires to wildlife on a landscape-wide scale won't be quick or easy. Under Forests With A Future, the net growth of forests still will far outpace planned tree removal. But the accumulating threat of decades of uncontrolled growth can be reversed strategically, even while the number of old-growth trees doubles in fifty years. Wildlife habitat will dramatically increase.