Graduate education programs in conservation science generally focus on disciplinary training and discipline-specific research skills. However, nonacademic conservation professionals often require an additional suite of skills. This discrepancy between academic training and professional needs can make it difficult for graduate students to identify the skills and experiences that will best prepare them for the conservation job market. We analyzed job advertisements for conservation-science positions and interviewed conservation professionals with experience hiring early-career conservation scientists to determine what skills employers of conservation professionals seek; whether the relative importance of skills varies by job sector (government, nonprofit, and private); and how graduate students interested in careers in conservation science might signal competency in key skills to potential employers. In job advertisements, disciplinary, interpersonal, and project-management skills were in the top 5 skills mentioned across all job sectors. Employers' needs for additional skills, like program leadership, conflict resolution and negotiation, and technical and information technology skills, varied across sectors. Our interview results demonstrated that some skills are best signaled to employers via experiences obtained outside thesis or dissertation work. Our findings suggest that graduate students who wish to be competitive in the conservation job market can benefit by gaining skills identified as important to the job sector in which they hope to work and should not necessarily expect to be competent in these skills simply by completing their chosen degree path.

Federal fire management plans are essential implementation guides for the management of wildland fire on federal lands. Recent changes in federal fire policy implementation guidance and fire science information suggest the need for substantial changes in federal fire management plans of the United States. Federal land management agencies are also undergoing land management planning efforts that will initiate revision of fire management plans across the country. Using the southern Sierra Nevada as a case study, we briefly describe the underlying framework of fire management plans, assess their consistency with guiding principles based on current science information and federal policy guidance, and provide recommendations for the development of future fire management plans. Based on our review, we recommend that future fire management plans be: (1) consistent and compatible, (2) collaborative, (3)

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Land managers implement forest fuel reduction treatments, including prescribed fire, mastication, and hand-and mechanical thinning, to modify wildfire behavior. Fuel treatments decrease tree density, increase mean canopy base height and remove surface fuels, and have been shown to reduce fire severity in yellow pine and mixed-conifer forests, even under relatively severe weather conditions. However, less is known about the impacts of fuel treatments on other facets of forest ecology. Synthesizing evidence from the scientific literature regarding their effects on forest structure, carbon, vegetation, soils, wildlife and forest pests, we found a developing consensus that fuel treatments, particularly those that include a prescribed fire component, may have neutral to positive effects on a number of ecological processes in frequent-fire coniferous forests and may increase forest resilience to future disturbance and stress.

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