Species conservation in a fiery future

北美西部森林的野火在规模、频率和严重程度上都在增加。在不列颠哥伦比亚省，有记录以来最严重的3个火灾年份分别发生在2017年、2018年和2021年。在许多森林中，火灾后抢救伐木发生在大野火之后，从而对野生动物栖息地增加了第二次严重干扰。这些巨大的地貌变化对大多数森林野生动物物种产生了未知的影响，这对于保护濒危物种的栖息地尤其令人关切。我对了解个体动物如何在这些改变的栖息地中航行以及这些个体选择如何影响种群动态和群落结构深感兴趣。由于干扰随着气候变化而增加，因此预测野生动物对干扰的反应非常重要，这样我们就可以防止干扰。 因此，我将集中在两个目标：（1）制定一个预测框架，火灾和火灾后抢救伐木如何影响野生动物在不同的尺度，（2）研究如何干扰纳入关键栖息地的指定和濒危物种的恢复规划。为了实现这些目标，我和我的学生将研究火灾规模和火灾后栖息地的异质性如何影响哺乳动物的猎物物种（如田鼠，小鼠，雪鞋野兔），哺乳动物的捕食者（如山猫，渔夫，郊狼），猛禽和猫头鹰。七名研究生将接受培训，因为我们专注于火灾的综合影响，其次是抢救伐木相比，火灾后的影响单独和评估如何干扰被纳入保护行动。接受过这项研究培训的学生将学习现场技能、数据分析和地理信息系统、协作以及如何向多个受众传播应用和政策相关的研究成果。这项拟议的工作扩展了我以前的研究，表明火灾的大小，年龄和火灾后的异质性在确定物种是否存在的重要性。我和我的学生还发现，火灾后的救援伐木大大减少和延迟了野生动物返回森林景观，但我们还不知道这些影响会持续多少年到几十年。我还描述了《濒危物种法》下的恢复规划和关键栖息地指定的执行不力。许多物种缺乏这些强制性的保护，许多名义上受保护的物种在面对日益增加的干扰时缺乏明确的保护。 我提出的工作将推进物种如何在面对多重严重干扰的情况下持续生存的知识。森林和野生动物管理人员将利用我们的结果为木材采伐决策提供信息，并制定在烧毁或砍伐的景观中保留野生动物的策略。在保护环境中，我们的工作将为物种列表和关键栖息地指定提供信息。因此，这项工作在加拿大直接使用，以确定哪些森林动物物种处于危险之中，支持它们的恢复，并管理森林景观。

Wildfires in western North American forests are increasing in size, frequency, and severity. In British Columbia, the 3 worst fire years on record occurred in 2017, 2018, and 2021. In many forests, post-fire salvage logging occurs after large wildfires, thus adding a second severe disturbance to wildlife habitat. These substantial landscape changes have unknown impacts on most forest wildlife species, which is of particular concern for protecting habitat for at-risk species. I am deeply interested in understanding how individual animals navigate through these transformed habitats and how these individual choices ramify into population dynamics and community structure. As disturbances increase with climate change, it is important to predict how wildlife respond to disturbance so that we can prevent extinctions. I will thus focus on two objectives: (1) to develop a predictive framework for how fire and post-fire salvage logging affect wildlife at different scales, and (2) to examine how disturbances are incorporated into critical habitat designations and recovery planning for imperiled species. To achieve these goals, my students and I will examine how fire size and post-fire habitat heterogeneity affect mammalian prey species (e.g. voles, mice, snowshoe hares), mammalian predators (e.g. lynx, fisher, coyote), and raptors and owls. Seven graduate students will be trained as we focus on the combined effects of fire followed by salvage logging compared to post-fire effects alone and evaluate how disturbance is included into conservation actions. Students trained with this research will learn field skills, data analysis and GIS, collaboration, and how to disseminate applied and policy-relevant research findings to multiple audiences. This proposed work extends my previous research that showed the importance of fire size, age, and post-fire heterogeneity in determining whether species are present. My students and I also found post-fire salvage logging strongly reduces and delays the return of wildlife to forested landscapes, but we do not yet know how many years to decades these effects last. I have also described the poor implementation of Recovery Planning and critical habitat designation under the Species at Risk Act. Many species lack these mandated protections, and many nominally protected species lack clear protections in the face of increased disturbance. My proposed work will advance knowledge of how species persist in the face of multiple severe disturbances. Forest and wildlife managers will use our results to inform timber harvest decisions and strategies for retaining wildlife on burned or logged landscapes. In conservation settings, our work will inform species listings and critical habitat designations. This work is thus of direct use in Canada, in determining which forest animal species are at-risk, supporting their recovery, and managing forested landscapes.