The persistence of Black-backed Woodpeckers following delayed salvage logging in the Sierra Nevada

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The Black-backed Woodpecker (Picoides arcticus) is a snag-associated species that colonizes and utilizes patches of burned forests typically within 10 years of fire. Previous research has indicated that salvage logging, the removal of dead and dying trees from burned forests, has a negative effect on nesting densities of Black-backed Woodpeckers. One strategy proposed to ameliorate the impacts of dead tree removal on Black-backed Woodpeckers is to retain patches, or islands, of dense snags within the salvage matrix, but this approach remains largely untested. Following the Angora fire of South Lake Tahoe, CA several snag islands were retained within the larger salvage prescription to conserve habitat for Black-backed Woodpeckers and other snag-associated species. In this observational study, we evaluate whether these snag islands were effective at maintaining Black-backed Woodpecker populations following logging operations that covered 45% of the burned area. We systematically searched the postfire landscape for Black-backed Woodpecker nests for two years before and after salvage operations and compared nesting densities between logged and unlogged areas. Similar to other studies, we found that nest densities at the stand scale declined significantly in areas that were salvage logged, but Black-backed Woodpeckers did nest in both snag islands and in other peripheral unlogged areas, indicating that this approach may help balance habitat for wildlife with management needs at the scale of the fire. In this study, the removal of dead trees, which is usually implemented in the first two years following fire, did not occur until the fourth year, which may have also contributed to the persistence of Black-backed Woodpeckers postlogging.Persistance du Pic à dos noir après une coupe de récupération différée dans la Sierra Nevada RÉSUMÉ. Le Pic à dos noir (Picoides arcticus), une espèce associée aux chicots, colonise et utilise des îlots de forêts brûlées, généralement dans la décennie suivant un feu. Des recherches antérieures ont montré que la coupe de récupération, qui enlève les arbres morts et mourants des forêts brûlées, avait des effets négatifs sur la densité de Pics à dos noir nicheurs. Une des stratégies proposées pour réduire les impacts de l'enlèvement des arbres morts sur les pics est de conserver des îlots denses de chicots dans la matrice de récupération, mais cette approche n'a pas encore vraiment été testée. À la suite du feu Angora à South Lake Tahoe, en Californie, plusieurs îlots de chicots ont été conservés dans le cadre de la prescription de récupération, afin de conserver de l'habitat pour les Pics à dis noir et les autres espèces associées avec les chicots. Dans la présente étude observationnelle, nous avons évalué si ces îlots de chicots remplissaient leur fonction de maintenir les populations de Pics à dos noir à la suite des opérations de récolte de bois qui ont couvert 45 % de l'aire brûlée. À même le paysage brûlé, nous avons systématiquement cherché des nids de ce pic, 2 ans avant e...

Patterns of woodboring beetle activity following fires and bark beetle outbreaks in montane forests of California, USA

“…Response variables are defined in Table 4 and predictor variables are defined in Table 5 more common in particular quadrats where bark beetles were absent, suggesting that the local retention of woodborers might be enhanced by prioritizing retention of trees less heavily infested by bark beetles. Our observations that woodborer larvae were more abundant in smaller pine snags with more southerly exposure, that Xylotrechus Chevrolat 1860 adults were more common where the dominant host tree taxon was true fir, and that Monochamus species were more common where burn severity was low to moderate, can further inform design of snag retention patches that might effectively promote successional processes and provide prey for wildlife species like the black-backed woodpecker (Siegel et al 2018;Tarbill et al 2018;Stillman et al 2019).…”

Fuel dynamics and reburn severity following high-severity fire in a Sierra Nevada, USA, mixed-conifer forest

“…Different sized patches may vary in habitat characteristics such as microclimate and amount of edge shared with green forest (Andrén 1994;Stephens et al 2013). It is an important goal to balance management objectives on a landscape to increase resilience by reducing future likelihood of high-severity fire while also leaving areas with high densities of snags, logs, and shrubs that can provide important habitat that has been lacking in firesuppressed areas (Peterson et al 2015;White et al 2016;Tarbill et al 2018). Conserving these habitat features at the appropriate scale may help to balance management objectives within large stand-replacing patches.…”

“…Post-fire management can pose as an opportunity to design and monitor treatments in such a way that the ecological impacts can be assessed and integrated into future management planning. For example, Tarbill et al (2018) examined how patterns and timing of salvage logging affected wildlife when remnant "islands" of snag habitat were preserved. Several studies have opportunistically analyzed how fuels treatments influenced subsequent fire spread and severity (e.g., Lydersen et al 2017;Johnson and Kennedy 2019;Kennedy et al 2019), but specific information on how the amount of large, dead wood on a landscape contributes to fire behavior is not well understood, and the dynamics of these fuels following treatments and wildfire are often not quantified or tracked over time due to limited resources.…”

Nestling provisioning behavior of Black‐backed Woodpeckers in post‐fire forest

“…Previous work has shown that nesting Black‐backed Woodpeckers generally avoid areas with extensive post‐fire logging, particularly when private holdings are clear‐cut and replanted with conifers (Tarbill et al. 2018).…”