Public Land Management Research Articles

Camping in clearcuts: The impacts of timber harvesting on USFS campground utilization

This research applies a temporally and spatially explicit model to analyze timber harvesting's impact on campground utilization on United States Forest Service (USFS) land across the Western U.S. Timber harvesting and camping can occur near one another due to multiple-use management strategies used by the USFS. However, intensive forest management can change the degree of perceived naturalness of a forest and may therefore negatively impact recreation. We investigate several facets of harvesting activity, such as proximity to camping, type of harvesting, regional differences, and persisting lagged impacts of timber harvesting. We find that harvesting activity significantly decreases campground reservations during the year of harvest, and this loss in campground utilization can be expected to have negative impacts on nearby tourism-dependent economies. Management implications•Intensive forest management generally negatively impacts campground utilization during the years of operations•Public land managers, such as the USFS, may seek to locate timber harvesting operations further from campgrounds if they wish to not negatively impact campground usage•Alternative, less-intensive, forms of forest management decrease nearby campground utilization less than timber harvesting, so do not necessarily need to be located further from campgrounds to avoid losses in their utilization•Decreased campground visitation due to timber harvesting may imply lower visitation to nearby gateway communities, and therefore less economic stimulation and spending in their economies, which may create an incentive for gateway communities to be involved in the harvest planning process

Factors influencing abundance of 3 tick species across a gradient of urban development intensity in the US Great Plains.

Urbanization alters abiotic conditions, vegetation, and wildlife populations in ways that affect tick abundance and tick-borne disease prevalence. Likely due to such changes, tick abundance has increased in many US urban areas. Despite growing public health importance of tick-borne diseases, little is known about how ticks are influenced by urbanization in North America, especially in the central United States where several pathogens occur at or near their highest incidences. To identify factors influencing tick abundance across a gradient of urbanization intensity, we used CO2 traps and flagging to sample ticks at 16 parks across Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA over 2 yr, conducted vegetation surveys, and used trail cameras to estimate a deer abundance index. Our results indicate there is a risk of encountering ticks across the entire urbanization gradient from exurban areas to the urban core, although some species (Dermacentor variabilis (Say)) appear less-common in heavily-urbanized areas. Vegetation variables were also associated with tick abundance. For example, Amblyomma maculatum Koch decreased with increasing woody plant and leaf litter cover, and there was a weak positive relationship between D. variabilis abundance and cover of understory eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana L.), indicating this native encroaching tree may increase tick populations in urban areas of the Great Plains. The deer abundance index was positively correlated with A. maculatum and D. variabilis abundance but unrelated to A. americanum (L.) abundance. Public health officials and land managers can use such information about parks/greenspaces and their surroundings to focus public education and land management efforts designed to reduce tick-borne disease prevalence.

Prioritizing science efforts to inform decision making on public lands

Public land management agencies in the US are committed to using science‐informed decision making, but there has been little research on the types and topics of science that managers need most to inform their decisions. We used the National Environmental Policy Act to identify four types of science information needed for making decisions relevant to public lands: (1) data on resources of concern, (2) scientific studies relevant to potential effects of proposed actions, (3) methods for quantifying potential effects of proposed actions, and (4) effective mitigation measures. We then used this framework to analyze 70 Environmental Assessments completed by the Bureau of Land Management in Colorado. Commonly proposed actions were oil and gas development, livestock grazing, land transactions, and recreation. Commonly analyzed resources included terrestrial wildlife, protected birds, vegetation, and soils. Focusing research efforts on the intersection of these resources and actions, and on developing and evaluating the effectiveness of mitigation measures to protect these resources, could strengthen the science foundation for public lands decision making.

Predicting climate-change induced heat-related illness risk in Grand Canyon National Park visitors.

The climate crisis is the greatest public health threat of the 21st century. Excessive heat is responsible for more deaths than any other extreme weather event, and the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme heat events are increasing globally due to climate change. Exposure to excessive heat can result in heat related illnesses (HRIs) and long-term poor health outcomes. Physical exertion, sudden exposure to excessive heat, and the lack of physical or behavioral adaptation resources are all associated with greater HRI risk, which is expected to increase for visitors to Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) and other public lands as climate change worsens. Our objectives were to understand 1) the relationship between weather and HRI in GCNP visitors, 2) how future HRI rates may change, and 3) how land management agencies can update risk mitigation strategies to match changing risk and better manage an increased HRI burden. We utilized previously published data on HRI in GCNP visitors, and records of daily visitation, temperatures, and maximum and minimum daily humidity from the same study period to develop a model estimate for HRI risk. We then used future climate projections from the World Climate Research Programme's Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 multi-model dataset to model future HRI risk under different climate scenarios. The incidence of HRI was significantly associated with maximum daily temperature and minimum relative humidity, and was more common in the shoulder season months. We estimated that HRI will increase 29%-137% over 2004-2009 levels through 2100, assuming no change in visitation. Climate change will continue to increase HRI risk for GCNP visitors and poses risks to public land managers' mission to provide for safe recreation experiences for the benefit of this and future generations in places like GCNP. Excessive risk during the shoulder season months presents an opportunity to increase preventative search and rescue and education efforts to mitigate increased risk.

Recovery of the grizzly bear at the intersection of law and science

Over the last 30 years, there have been numerous legal battles over recovery of the grizzly bear. These battles have brought to fore a question central to implementation of the Act, namely is the goal of recovery to merely remediate extinction risk or to affect broader ecosystem recovery. I systematically reviewed court decisions related to the grizzly bear’s recovery plan, efforts to remove protections for grizzly bears, and challenges to logging, mining and other projects with impacts to grizzly bears. A legal challenge to the grizzly bear’s 1993 recovery plan forced the Service to develop habitat-based recovery criteria for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Legal efforts to reopen the recovery plan and expand recovery into additional areas of historic range, however, were unsuccessful, leaving the scope of recovery largely at the discretion of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Lawsuits brought by multiple conservation groups, tribes and individuals have constrained this discretion, twice stopping the agency from stripping Greater Yellowstone grizzly bears of federal protections. This has allowed the population to grow and forced consideration of the impact of removing protections for Greater Yellowstone bears on overall recovery as a requirement of any future effort to remove protections. Court decisions were issued on 65 challenges to projects impacting grizzly bear habitat, including 44 involving logging and related road construction, seven mining, four livestock grazing, two recreation, five oil and gas leasing and three road projects, leading to 11 of these projects being stopped and nine modified. Lawsuits were also filed to stop hunting in four instances, trapping in one, predator control in one and railroad mortality in two, as well as activities that disturb bears, including helicopters in two instances and snow mobile use in another, resulting in four being stopped and another 3 modified. Protection of the grizzly bear under the Endangered Species Act, along with subsequent litigation, has led to substantial changes in management of public lands in the four recovery zones with grizzly bear populations, but not elsewhere in the species’ range. Overall, the legal system is an important, but often overlooked, part of recovery of endangered species.

Factors associated with preemptive conservation under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

In recent decades, there has been an increasing emphasis on proactive efforts to conserve species being considered for listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) before they are listed (i.e., preemptive conservation). These efforts, which depend on voluntary actions by public and private land managers across the species' range, aim to conserve species while avoiding regulatory costs associated with ESA listing. We collected data for a set of social, economic, environmental, and institutional factors that we hypothesized would influence voluntary decisions to promote or inhibit preemptive conservation of species under consideration for ESA listing. We used logistic regression to estimate the association of these factors with preemptive conservation outcomes based on data for a set of species that entered the ESA listing process and were either officially listed (n=314) or preemptively conserved (n=73) from 1996 to 2018. Factors significantly associated with precluded listing due to preemptive conservation included high baseline conservation status, low proportion of private land across the species' range, small total range size, exposure to specific types of threats, and species' range extending over several states. These results highlight strategies that can help improve conservation outcomes, such as allocating resources for imperiled species earlier in the listing process, addressing specific threats, and expanding incentives and coordination mechanisms for conservation on private lands.

A text-messaging chatbot to support outdoor recreation monitoring through community science

Public land managers depend on reliable and readily available data about outdoor recreation in parks and greenspaces. However, traditional recreation monitoring techniques including visitor surveying and counting cannot be implemented over large spatial and temporal scales, especially in remote and undeveloped settings where monitoring is costly. To fill these data gaps, and thereby inform decision-making, this study develops and tests the efficacy of a novel recreation monitoring technique that engages visitors in data collection using a chatbot and text-messages. Drawing on knowledge and methods from community science and crowdsourcing, we present a relatively low-cost and low-barrier approach to counting and characterizing recreational visits on public lands. In an 18-month pilot implementation on a national forest in Washington, USA, we found that crowdsourced data collected using the chatbot were consistent with results of controlled counts and in-person surveys. Furthermore, some sites received relatively high participation rates, up to 12% of recreating parties, regardless of cellular connectivity at the site. This study, which is the first to engage public land usersin community science using a text-messaging chatbot for the purposes of studying outdoor recreation, demonstrates the potential for technology to support new community science approaches that involve visitors in land stewardship and the development of recreation monitoring systems.

The Use of Drones for Recreational Impact Monitoring of Public Lands

As visitation to park and protected areas increases globally, public land managers seek to increase the implementation of simple and cost-effective methods to collect indicator and threshold data to address environmental and visitor experience concerns. Unmanned aerial vehicles, also referred to as drones, may be a logical addition to monitoring regimes. This study examined the outcome of using overhead drone imagery to monitor two management-selected indicators, visitor-created trails, and vegetation loss, in a newly established Kansas state park, Little Jerusalem Badlands. Images were analyzed by SamplePoint software in 10x10 meter grids with 100 sample points each. Within the first five months of the park opening, vegetation loss was observed in key areas of Little Jerusalem at rates varying from 2.7% to 42.3%. The formation of one visitor-created trail also occurred during this time. These results confirm the benefit of using drones for long term monitoring of environmental indicators that will aid land management agencies in decision-making to reduce recreational impacts associated with visitor use.

Urban Grassland Afforestation as a Public Land Management Tool for Environmental Improvement: The Example of Krakow (Poland)

Afforestation can play a significant role in greenhouse gas emission reduction through increased carbon (C) sequestration in the biomass and soil. However, its environmental effects, especially through changes in soil characteristics as a result of afforestation, are still poorly understood. In this work, we studied the response of grassland soils derived from two different parent materials to afforestation. We measured the basic soil properties, including pH, C accumulation, nutrient contents and enzyme activity, in soils from grasslands and mature forests. We focused on the parameters associated with organic matter and the changes resulting from afforestation. We established that in the humus layers, habitat played a more important role in creating the soil properties, including organic-C accumulation, than land use (forest vs. grassland). We created models to explain the C storage in the soils, which indicated the substantial role of certain conditions in promoting the stabilisation of the organic matter, such as pH, and the amount of clay, humines and residue. We determined negative changes in the soil properties when compared with grassland and forest soils, but we found increased C storage, which counteracts the increased emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The results of our work may be of use for afforestation planners and urban managers.

Saints, Sinners, and Sovereign Citizens: The Endless War over the West's Public Lands

In this timely and compelling work, John L. Smith skillfully engages the numerous and diverse factors at play in what he appropriately refers to as the endless war over public lands in the American West. While his focus is ostensibly on Cliven Bundy and his family's contentious relationship with the federal government, Smith uses Bundy to expose how one case about grazing rights—albeit a dramatic and famous one—can represent the complex and often bitter interaction between westerners and Washington, DC over federal land management. In so doing, Smith tackles a bevy of issues, including the rise of conservatism in the West that manifested during the 1980s as the Sagebrush Rebellion, the growing impact that “an age of social-media celebrity, YouTube stardom, citizen journalism” has had in aggravating political divides, and the rise of militias and extremism that have militarized public discourse (xv).Smith knows the topic and his subjects well, which is a significant strength of the book. As a native Nevadan and journalist who covered the Bundy battle with the federal bureaucracy for several years and for various news outlets, Smith demonstrates command of the material and an intimacy with those most closely involved in the story. His familiarity with the Bundy clan presents an opportunity to cover not only the public but also the more personal side of Cliven and his sons, principally through use of interviews and personal testimonies the Bundys used to promote their side of the eventual conflict. Smith also paints vibrant portraits of other people involved in the standoff and in the larger frame of local and federal relations. For instance, he includes an insightful chapter on former Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid.Smith's biography of Reid is an example of the author at his best: he combines a detailed explanation of Reid's upbringing and a familiarity with his hometown with an appreciation for how the senator's early experiences in local politics and his close connection to the Nevada mining industry laid the groundwork for his approach to land use and environmental policy and his power in the Senate. Smith utilizes Reid's story to represent the complex web of negotiation and compromise that public lands management often produces. As the author notes, Reid's “efforts to protect the land would earn him two national awards from the Sierra Club and the Stewart Udall Conservation Award for his work to protect public lands, yet he was also celebrated with a lifetime-achievement award from the Nevada Mining Association and given a place of honor in the American Gaming Hall of Fame—two industries known for their lack of environmental sensibilities” (201). Rather than suggesting that this rather problematical juggling act is unique to Reid, Smith provides examples of others who have tried to navigate public lands issues through a more moderate path, beholden to neither the Bundy-style version of privatization and private use of public resources nor the management style applied by federal bureaucracies such as the Bureau of Land Management. Reid's seeming ambivalence represents the complexity of land use management in much of the West, but Bundy captures headlines and galvanizes those on the extreme end of the spectrum, which has only further muddied the situation and reinforced the sense that the radical right has identified public lands use as a principal arena of combat.Smith covers considerable ground in his mostly thematic chapters with attention to the religious, social, economic, and political histories of Nevada and the Mountain West. While this approach provides several distinct essays that serve as chapters, the work lacks cohesion and focus in spots, which leaves the reader connecting the dots. A more concerted effort to explain ties between the recent rise of militia movements in the West with the expansion of the radical right in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, would lend credence to the historical dynamics at play in the Bundy movement. Moreover, such an array of coverage means that some topics lack depth. The Sagebrush Rebellion, for example, garners several mentions in the book and understanding it is necessary to ground the Bundy resistance in the past, but the roots of the rebellion and its relation to Ronald Reagan only received some twenty pages.In total, though, this is a great introduction to the Bundys and the larger contest over public lands, the rise of radical conservatism, and the volatility of contemporary politics. Smith's familiarity with the subject and his ability to weave together so many different threads work well this readable work on public land use conflicts in the American West. Saints, Sinners, and Sovereign Citizens should enjoy a wide academic and public audience.

“Nothing Beats Nature”: Park Visitor Preferences for Natural Turfgrass and Artificial Turf: A Case Study

Green spaces comprising natural turfgrass are ubiquitous in urban areas globally and allow for a variety of ecosystem services that benefit nature and people. However, traditional natural turfgrass is often critiqued for the number of inputs (e.g., fertilizer, water) required to maintain it. With those critiques in mind, some cities have turned to artificial turf as an alternative groundcover despite environmental and human health concerns (e.g., heavy metal leaching, volatile organic compounds). Research of artificial turf has been minimal compared with that of the growth of installations, especially related to social aspects of the surface. The current research used an in-person experiential case study of park visitors in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area of Minneapolis–St. Paul, MN, USA, to investigate how individuals perceived artificial turf compared with natural turfgrass as it relates to potential uses (e.g., resting/relaxing) and beliefs about sustainability (e.g., environmental impacts). Overall, participants preferred natural turfgrass across all uses but two (recreational and organized sports). The largest differences were observed for the use for picnic areas and the use for play areas for pets. Participants also perceived natural turfgrass as more sustainable than artificial turf, corresponding to the contribution to human health and well-being. In contrast, participants equally perceived the use of these surfaces in terms of natural resources. These findings have implications for public land managers, urban planners, city councils, and other stakeholders because they consider the adoption of artificial turf or other possible alternatives (e.g., low-input turfgrasses, bee lawns) to traditional turfgrass in the communities and their sustainability, maintenance, and cost-savings.

Evaluating diversity, equity, and inclusivity in outdoor programs for veterans on public lands

Outdoor programs operating on U.S. public lands introduce a range of activities, settings, and therapies for veterans experiencing post-traumatic stress, injuries, or disabilities. The extent to which these programs serve diverse veteran populations is not well understood in terms of race, ethnicity, age, gender, ability, or socioeconomic status. Since governmental agencies are increasingly required to foster diversity, equity, and inclusivity, this presents a knowledge gap with policy implications. We paired a thematic analysis of interviews with outdoor professionals with a content analysis of program websites. We found that promotional materials for outdoor veterans’ programs feature predominantly White, male, youthful clientele without visible disabilities, potentially making it difficult for others to see a place for themselves. Interviewees expressed concern about their ability to accommodate participants’ diverse identities and abilities. We discuss how program providers and public land managers can improve inclusivity and serve diverse populations of veterans.

Integrating traditional ecological knowledge into US public land management: Knowledge gaps and research priorities

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is an understanding of natural systems acquired through long-term human interactions with particular landscapes. Traditional knowledge systems complement western scientific disciplines by providing a holistic assessment of ecosystem dynamics and extending the time horizon of ecological observations. Integration of TEK into land management is a key priority of numerous groups, including the United Nations and US public land management agencies; however, TEK principles have rarely been enshrined in national-level US policy or planning. We review over 20 years of TEK literature to describe key applications of TEK to ecological understanding, conservation, restoration and land management generally. By identifying knowledge gaps, we highlight research avenues to support the integration of TEK into US public land management, in order to enhance conservation approaches and participation of historically underrepresented groups, particularly American Indian Tribes, in the stewardship of ancestral lands critical to the practice of living cultural traditions.

Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West ed. by Gregory E. Smoak

Reviewed by: Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West ed. by Gregory E. Smoak Emily Gowen Gregory E. Smoak, editor, Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West. Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 2021. 232 pp. Hardcover, $70; paper, $35; e-book, $28. In the twelve essays that make up Gregory Smoak’s Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West, the University of Utah’s American West Center comes into view as the contested center of a fifty-year battle to define and expand the parameters of public history. In one sense the volume is a rich, polyvocal institutional history of the center, and a loving tribute to its founders’ vision. In another sense, though, the volume is an extended meditation on the most pressing questions that animate the field of public history. What sorts of tensions arise when historians, Richard White asks, enter the public sphere? How do we resist the popular urge to instrumentalize history, to make it speak the way we want it to? Or as Liesl Carr Childers puts it, what happens when history is “hostage” to politics? (27). And what would it look like to truly center Native voices in the way we tell stories about the American West? The volume offers several models of good public history: Michael Childers writes about Hal Rothman, the late historian and public intellectual who sought to “engage the public on its own terms” and “create the ears with which to hear us” (41). Leighton M. Quarles shares lessons from his own work as a historian for the National Park Service, a role in which nationalist mythmaking, tribal memory, environmental preservation, and the mandates of a tourism economy jostle for primacy. As many of the essays insist, a professional historian is uniquely positioned to understand and combat the settler colonial origins of land preservation projects that, in the popular imagination, are often billed as an unalloyed good. Yvette Towersap Tuell calls walking the line between serving Native history and public land management “working on the dark side” (101). But she insists that inhabiting such a vexed position is essential if we are to “better incorporate Native history and local knowledge into . . . policy decisions” (101). From the adjudication of tribal water rights to the interpretive decisions made on ghost tours, to the creation of new centers for [End Page 88] Native American and Indigenous studies programs, to the digitization of archives, the volume charts the American West Center’s sprawling and complex legacy, and showcases the hard, often frustrating, but richly rewarding work of “doing public history in the American West” (1; emphasis original). In its best moments the volume lives up to its own definitions of public history, offering a road map to young scholars interested in forging careers that span disciplines, audiences, and institutional constituencies. For those entering the profession today this volume may even feel like a life raft. Its vivid accounting of the wide range of purposes to which a historian’s credentials can be put offers a much more expansive vision of a fulfilling academic career than we often see in discussions of the academy today. To read Western Lands, Western Voices is to get an up-close look at what it’s like to wade into the messy, fascinating, unfinished work of public history in the American West, and perhaps even to be inspired to enter the public sphere oneself. [End Page 89] Emily Gowen The American Antiquarian Society Copyright © 2023 Western Literature Association

Understanding Perceptions of Climate Change Scenario Planning in United States Public Land Management Agencies

As climate change increasingly challenges the capacity of traditional decision-making modalities to contend with mounting complexities and uncertainties, natural resource management agencies have increasingly turned to nontraditional modes of planning and decision-making such as ‘futuring. Futuring methods, such as scenarios, have been increasingly utilized around the world. In the US, however, there has been a limited uptake of these tools across public land management and a preference for more traditional forecasting tools. This article explores some possibilities about why this is the case and aims to identify potential pathways forward. Drawing on 28 exploratory interviews with public land managers from the US Forest Service and others, a variety of benefits to scenario use were identified including: (1) mitigation of climate skepticism; (2) more robust capture of uncertainty, complexity, and the potential for surprise posed by climate change; and (3) potential for social learning. Barriers identified included: (1) difficulty in understanding the process, (2) bureaucratic concerns about time, staffing, and funding, and (3) a lack of an agency ‘champion’. However, concerns about the epistemological and institutional fit of nontraditional planning and decision-making tools like scenario processes predominated across the interviews. Interviewees also identified what we call ‘streamlining’ and ‘mainstreaming’ as potential pathways to integrate scenario processes into planning and decision-making.

Prescribed Fire Causes Wounding and Minor Tree Quality Degradation in Oak Forests

Despite the adaptation of many oak (Quercus) species to repeated surface fire, many public land managers in eastern North America resist using prescribed fire as a regeneration tool because of fire’s perceived negative impacts on timber values through the wounding of overstory trees. We retrospectively quantified fire-associated wounds in 139 oak-dominated stands across four national forests, each with a history of zero to six prescribed fires within the last 30 years. For trees > 25.4 cm dbh (n = 8093), fire-associated wounds within the first 3.67 m of height were categorized by type, measured for defect size and graded both accounting for and then ignoring the fire-associated wounds. Most fire-associated wounds (n = 3403) were catfaces (32.5%), seams (30.5%) or bark slough (30.1%), although catfaces had 2.1–6.4 times the average volume loss of any other wound type (9.90 ± 0.72 bd ft). Among the 2160 wounded trees sampled, 741 had multiple (≥2) wounds. Although 29.1% of all trees had at least one wound associated with prescribed fire, only 7.0% of those trees exhibited a reduction in tree grade. The likelihood of wounding was greater in stands receiving more prescribed burns, but unaffected by tree diameter for either thin- or thick-barked species. Considering both the likelihoods of wounding and grade reduction, white oak (Q. alba), chestnut oak (Q. montana), hickory (Carya sp.), shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata) and yellow-poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) trees were more resistant to prescribed fire damage than other species. While our findings cannot be related directly to individual fire parameters, such as fireline intensity or fire duration, these results do provide estimates of the cumulative effects of multiple management-based prescribed fires that can be incorporated into fire effects models.

The Greater San Rafael Swell: Honoring Tradition and Preserving Storied Lands. By Stephen E. Strom and Jonathan T. Bailey

When surveyed among the celebrated landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, Utah’s San Rafael Swell is often overlooked. This land of hardened sandstone and sculpted badlands neither has the familiarity nor designations of nearby parks and monuments. Stephen E. Strom and Jonathan T. Bailey urge readers to take notice of it. For over two decades now, locals, officials, and conservationists quietly brokered compromises avoiding the sticky political mire that usually characterize public lands politics. Hoping to get out in front of public lands issues before executive action resulted in a monument designation or legislative measures imposed wilderness areas without local input, county citizens and officials began actively meeting in the 1990s to consider solutions to public lands issues in their county. Conversations between conservation and recreation groups, off-highway vehicle (OHV) enthusiasts, tribal communities, and other individuals and groups eventually led to a major piece of federal legislation, the Emery County Public Land Management Act. Signed into law in 2019, the act created three wilderness areas, a recreation area, and an enlarged state park. The authors outline in briefer detail similar conservation successes in Washington County, Utah, and in Custer and Owyhee Counties, Idaho.

Forest-clearing to create early-successional habitats: Questionable benefits, significant costs

A campaign is underway to clear established forests and expand early-successional habitats—also called young forest, pre-forest, early seral, or open habitats—with the intention of benefitting specific species. Coordinated by federal and state wildlife agencies, and funded with public money, public land managers work closely with hunting and forestry interests, conservation organizations, land trusts, and private landowners toward this goal. While forest-clearing has become a major focus in the Northeast and Upper Great Lakes regions of the U.S., far less attention is given to protecting and recovering old-forest ecosystems, the dominant land cover in these regions before European settlement. Herein we provide a discussion of early-successional habitat programs and policies in terms of their origins, in the context of historical baselines, with respect to species’ ranges and abundance, and as they relate to carbon accumulation and ecosystem integrity. Taken together, and in the face of urgent global crises in climate, biodiversity, and human health, we conclude that public land forest and wildlife management programs must be reevaluated to balance the prioritization and funding of early-successional habitat with strong and lasting protection for old-growth and mature forests, and, going forward, must ensure far more robust, unbiased, and ongoing monitoring and evaluation.

Policy level analysis of public urban lands management in Burundi: insights for harmonization of policy frameworks

Policy level analysis of public urban lands management in Burundi: insights for harmonization of policy frameworks

Prescribed fire in longleaf pine ecosystems: fire managers’ perspectives on priorities, constraints, and future prospects

BackgroundProjected trajectories of climate and land use change over the remainder of the twenty-first century may result in conditions and situations that require flexible approaches to conservation planning and practices. For example, prescribed burning is a widely used management tool for promoting longer-term resilience and sustainability in longleaf pine ecosystems of the southeastern United States, but regional stressors such as climatic warming, changing fire conditions, and an expanding wildland-urban interface may challenge its application. To facilitate the development of fire management strategies that account for such changes, we surveyed nearly 300 fire managers to elicit information on the criteria used for prioritizing burn sites, current burning practices and constraints, and expectations for changes in burning opportunities, including those pertaining to climate change and urban growth.ResultsRespondents noted that their most common criteria for selecting longleaf pine stands for burning were fire history, ecosystem health, and fuel reduction, with the presence of threatened and endangered species also given priority by public land managers. Many respondents (38%) cited recent burn frequencies that fall short of historic burn intervals. Barriers to burning included legal, institutional, and managerial constraints, such as proximity to human developments, public concerns, and risk aversion, as well as environmental and resource constraints, including weather, air quality restrictions, and lack of personnel, equipment, or funding. Roughly half of all respondents expect that opportunities to burn will be reduced over the next 30 years, particularly during the growing season. Fire manager perceptions of factors that will limit prescribed burning in the future include a similar suite of constraints, many of which will be affected by projected regional changes in land use and climate.ConclusionsOn an organizational level, burn window availability and resource limitations constrain prescribed burning practices. More broadly, policy and legal frameworks coupled with trends in urbanization and climate change are expected to interact with operational constraints to challenge managers’ abilities to implement landscape-scale burning strategies and achieve restoration goals. Additional research and engagement with fire managers are needed to investigate opportunities for introducing policy flexibility, leveraging shared management interests, and developing creative solutions to expand burning opportunities.