The last of the "Grizzly Bear Brothers", John Craighead passed yesterday at age 100..................."John Craighead and his twin brother, Frank, were intrepid explorers and pioneering conservation biologists who helped reshape our scientific understanding of grizzly bears, the migration patterns of predators, and the ecology of the greater Yellowstone system"............ "They chronicled their explorations in the pages of National Geographic magazine, starting in 1936, when they were 20 years old"............."In 1998, John Craighead received the Aldo Leopold Award, and both twins were named among America's top scientists of the 20th century by the Audubon Society".............

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/john-craighead-yellowstone-bears-biologist/&ct=ga&cd=CAEYAioTMTA0NTU3ODkyMTEzMTg2NzMxNTIaNTZkMWU3ZjE5ZThmOTk5MTpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AFQjCNHsk02JI0iT4ZU1N6uEIg1IvxroTg

THE POWER OF PARKS

Pioneering Conservation Biologist 

Reshaped Our Understanding of 

Bears and Yellowstone

John Craighead passed away at the 
age of 100.

by Brian Clark Howard

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 21, 2016

View Images John Craighead, as photographed for National Geographic magazine by Erika Larsen PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIKA LARSEN,NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

John and Frank Craighead
in Yellowstone studying Griz

While we hear from so many nimrods who continually demonize and call for "intense year long harvesting" of Pumas, Wolves and Bears, science and "old school" evidence on the ground back up the fact that the age old dance of predator and prey has never been responsible for extermination of the prey animals...........The "proof is in the pudding" as "Big Sky Country", Montana has demonstrated in its most recent Elk hunting season..............Hunters there had their single best year on record with 31,000 Elk killed in 2015..............And the two years prior to that were not too shabby either for these "sportsmen" with 25,700 in 2014 and 20,100 in 2013 removed from Montana's open space,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,And how about this fact-------"The region where more elk are consistently taken is Region 3 in southwestern Montana"........... "This seems a bit odd considering that Region 3 surrounds the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, an area rich with predators like wolves, grizzly bears and mountain lions".............And with an estimated 163,000 Elk statewide, annual hunter kill is only 19% of the population, barely denting Elk recruitment--same for the "take" of the carnivore suite living in Montana--minimal denting the health of the Elk...............As the name of this Blog states----COYOTES, WOLVES(BEARS, BOBCATS, LYNX, FISHERS, MARTENS) AND COUGARS FOREVER!!!!!.......Calling on all State Game Commissions to stop viewing Carnivores as vermin------------Let them thrive and no more demonizing of them------------They and the Elk, Deer and Moose they hunt will all endure if we provide them with land---room to roam!!!

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/recreation/montana-hunters-killed-record-number-of-elk-in/article_d08059bc-e947-52ed-90a0-5149d38a4cd9.html&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoTNzg4MjA3NDcwMjQxNjUzMzEyNjIaZDU2MjY2MGY2ZDYzYjlmMTpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AFQjCNEGm8Vjg9RoxRAka8Bjd_9XsGTzz

http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/recreation/report-map-examine-elk-hunting-in-terms-of-open-roads/article_12bcac78-a7b6-5421-b5d5-ec0038600964.html

Montana hunters killed record number of elk in 2015

More elk were killed last hunting season — almost 31,000 — than at any time since harvest surveys began 16 years ago, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks data.

“It was an excellent year last year, even during the general season,” said John Vore, FWP’s Game Management Bureau chief. “Conditions were just right, and possibly there were more landowners letting folks on.”

Last season’s harvest got a small boost when FWP extended the season in five hunting districts in Region 4 until Feb. 15. Now called shoulder seasons, the extended hunting dates were a controversial move that angered some who believe the late hunts stress female elk when they are pregnant and treat them more like pests than prized big game. The longer hunt in those areas resulted in the removal of more than 600 cow elk.

“With the 2015 pilot project we learned you can harvest a lot of elk if landowners cooperate,” Vore said.

He was referring to the hunting districts across the state where social tolerance has deemed the elk populations too high. The challenge for FWP has been to lower those elk numbers on private lands where public hunting access is limited or nonexistent.

The figures

That 2015 figure is up from a total elk harvest of more than 25,700 in 2014 and 20,100 in 2013. The previous record-high harvest was in 2003 when 29,000 elk were killed by hunters.

The majority of the elk shot in 2015, about 53 percent, were taken on private land. That’s a slight shift from the previous two years and may show a trend of landowners being more willing to allow hunter access, as well as more hunters being successful on state Block Management Areas — places where FWP pays landowners to allow controlled public access.

Or maybe it just means there are more elk on private land. Elk distribution on private land increased by 17 percent between 2004 and 2015, according to FWP.

Fun with numbers

One of the other unique items of information conveyed in the three years of elk harvest survey results is that the region where more elk are consistently taken is Region 3 in southwestern Montana. This seems a bit odd considering that Region 3 surrounds the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, an area rich with predators like wolves, grizzly bears and mountain lions.

Another statistic that shows up in the survey is that Region 6, in northeastern Montana, is the place with the highest amount of elk harvested on public land. That’s thanks to the large swaths of state and federal acreage in the area.

“If you think about where elk are distributed in Region 6, on the BLM lands and (Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge), then it makes sense,” Kujala said.

According to the 2015 data, in most regions the cow elk and bull harvests are fairly equal, with the cow harvest typically a bit higher but not by much. The exception is Region 1 in northwest Montana where the bull harvest accounts for about 73 percent of the total elk killed.

Perspective

Montana FWP has been under steadily increasing pressure from some legislators as well as landowners to reduce the number of elk in the state. The animals’ population has steadily grown as they have expanded eastward from what was once their Western Montana mountain stronghold to re-establish a presence in prairie terrain where they hadn’t lived in decades.

This year’s surveys estimate the elk population in Montana at more than 163,000. That’s more elk than the entire population of Billings, the state’s largest city, which is estimated at 109,000. That compares to an estimated elk population of 136,000 in 2008, or roughly a 20 percent increase in eight years.

With hunting the main means of controlling elk populations FWP has to contend with what’s been a reduction in the number of hunters statewide accompanied by more landowners denying public hunter access to elk herds.

With a closer tracking of harvest trends FWP is building a database that it could use to show legislators and landowners in finer detail what is happening on the landscape. With elk shoulder seasons the agency should be able to demonstrate whether allowing public hunting access to private lands is capable of reducing elk populations.

“It will be interesting how that body of data grows,” Kujala said. “Are harvest prescriptions being met (in shoulder hunt areas)?

“The harvest is up. On the surface that is a good thing, but does it represent an interruption of those growth trends?”
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Another reiteration that Eastern coyotes(30-55 pound heavyweights) are not true deer eating carnivores like Eastern(Red) and Gray Wolves,,,,, and Pumas............We have commented on biologist Jacqueline Frair's (past couple of years) New York State Coyote Study on several previous occasions and her revelations about the fact that while Eastern Coyotes can and do take adult deer periodically, and kill fawns in the Spring after they are first born, they are not a primary control or "dampening agent" of "Bambi",,,,,,,,,,,,,,Beaver and Hares are preferred prey and the Coyotes do compete with Fishers, Bobcats, Red and Gray Foxes for that fare...............All of these meso-carnivores have re-arranged their allignment in our Eastern woodlands and all continue to "punch out" a living off of the prey base that exist there..................As stated over the Summer months on this Blog, rewilding the Appalachian Chain with a large enough "sample" of Eastern(Red) Wolves(and Pumas) is the key to reducing whitetail Deer degradation of our Forests.............Put enough Eastern(Red) Wolves back on the ground and the need to hybridize with Eastern and Western Coyotes would be decreased exponentially as the Wolves would have their own kind in proximity to mate with,

https://northernwoodlands.org/discoveries/deer-in-the-diet

Deer in the Diet

by Todd McLeish

Summer 2016

Discoveries

August 8, 2016

1 Comments

A coyote is outfitted with a GPS collar, which will be used to track its movements and predation patterns. Photo by Jacqueline Frair.

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Coyotes have become ubiquitous in the Northeast since they began colonizing the region in the 1920s. The conventional wisdom has been that coyotes are specialists in preying on deer, thus filling a biological niche left by the extirpated wolves. But new research by scientists at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry indicates that this is no longer the case and may never have been, at least in the Adirondack Mountain region.

Using archived coyote scat and data from past studies, Jacqueline Frair and her colleagues constructed a timeline of coyote diets in the Adirondacks going as far back as the 1950s. They also walked trails and collected fresh coyote scat to identify their present prey.

The researchers found that the primary prey of coyotes in the Adirondacks historically was snowshoe hare, and in recent years it has been mostly beaver, whose populations are more stable from year to year than those of the hare. Deer were a primary resource only when those species were less available. “They seemed to augment their diet with deer when hare were in a down cycle, and now they’ve switched to beaver,” Frair said. “Coyotes can certainly take a deer, but a nice fat beaver seems to be preferred.”

In the Adirondacks, coyotes primarily kill adult deer in winter, when the snow is deep. But their consumption of deer in winter declined from the 1980s to the present, so Frair doesn’t believe coyotes are having a significant effect on adult deer mortality. Coyotes’ consumption of fawns during that period remained consistent.

The big question is how coyotes’ consumption of beaver will affect deer. “By concentrating on the abundant beaver, coyotes may ultimately lower their overall use of deer,” she said. “Or it may elevate the population of coyotes and have a spillover effect on deer. Time will tell.”

Outside of the Adirondacks, however, Frair thinks coyotes have little effect on deer. In the southern tier of New York, where she conducted a comparative study, most of the deer consumed by coyotes were shown to be scavenged; there, coyotes’ primary prey was cottontails, woodchucks, livestock, and small mammals like squirrels.

In a related study, Frair found that the abundant coyotes in the Adirondack region are directly competing for prey with other native carnivores, especially gray and red foxes, bobcats, and fishers. She speculates that coyotes may be displacing fishers in parts of northern New York. And though their diets largely overlap, Frair said that red foxes are finding a refuge from coyote competition by spending more time in suburban backyards. Her next studies will examine how coyotes interact with red foxes, especially in human-dominated landscapes.

I have some very good friends who are hunters and fishermen and I applaud their love of the outdoors and their $$ contributions to various wildlife causes via their license tags.................The philosophy that I want to encourage further among all who shoot, trap and fish is that their love of nature must extend to the entire natural system,the carnivores and the non-game animals-----not only the animals and fish that they pursue in their outdoor endeavors............Once again citing the person who hits the nail squarely regarding the importance about optimizing the circle of life is our great 20th century naturalist Aldo Leopold -----“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" ..........."If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not"............. "If the biota, in the course of eons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts?"......... "To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering"

From: AZGFD [mailto:e-news@azgfd.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2016 1:43 PM
To: Meril, Rick
Subject: Contributions of hunters, anglers benefit everyone

GAME AND FISH NEWS Sept. 21, 2016  Contributions of hunters,  anglers benefit everyone  Gov. Doug Ducey signs proclamation  honoring original conservationists PHOENIX – Even if you don't actively participate in the  time-honored traditions of hunting or angling, National  Hunting and Fishing Day is a day of celebration for  everyone. Whatever your interest in wildlife, hunters and  anglers – the original conservationists – have made  countless contributions over the decades to the  conservation of fish and wildlife through sound,  science-based management. Gov. Doug Ducey recently signed a proclamation celebrating National Hunting and Fishing Day on  Saturday, as well as recognizing the role that the  state's hunting and angling community plays as  an economic driver. It's important to understand how those outdoor  pursuits benefit wildlife. Since 1939, hunters and  anglers have generated more than $15 billion  toward wildlife restoration through an excise tax  imposed on the sale of hunting, angling and  shooting-sports equipment. Those funds are administered by the federal  Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration (WSFR)  program, one of the most significant programs  benefitting wildlife conservation and outdoor  recreation. WSFR funds, along with the sale of  hunting and fishing licenses, provide a substantial  portion of wildlife conservation funding for activities   such as fish and wildlife population management,  habitat management, research, surveys, land  acquisition, hunter education, shooting and  archery ranges, boating access, and more. Who benefits? The general public gets better  stewardship of natural resources. Hunters and  anglers get more and better places to hunt and f ish. State and federal agencies receive more funds  to meet their conservation needs. More than 786,000 Arizona hunters and anglers  certainly are doing their part to keep the state in t he black, spending more than $1.2 billion annually  and supporting 18,220 jobs, according to the latest  report (2011) by the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation. As a result, $132 million in state and  local taxes, and another $155 million in federal  taxes, are collected annually. "I want to thank Gov. Ducey for this proclamation  that recognizes hunters and anglers as the  cornerstone of conservation in Arizona," said  Edward "Pat" Madden, chairman of the Arizona  Game and Fish Commission. "They are being  recognized for job creation, financial impact,  conservation efforts and wildlife enhancement. "On their day, the citizens of Arizona should take  a moment and thank a hunter or angler for their  contributions to our state."    As part of National Hunting and Fishing Day, the  Arizona Game and Fish Department will be  hosting a free public fishing event as part of  "Verde River Days" at Dead Horse Ranch State  Park. For more information, including a listing of  additional free public fishing events statewide in  October, visit https://fishazblog.com/free-public-events/. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wisconsin is about to undertake a 5 year study of how predators impact Deer in the southwestern portion of the state............Chronic Wasting Disease, a brain disease causing Deer to to go mad and ultimately die, impacts roughly 9 to 10% of Wisconsin's deer herd.............So Governor Walker and his Natural Resource folks want to see if predators are upping the ante and casuging Deer herds to shrink precipitously because of the weakened state that CWD puts deer in.................As Wolves and Pumas do not exist in southwest Wisconsin where the study is taking place, it seems silly to be spending $3 million on a study that will target coyotes and bobcats, neither of which have been shown to be debilitating predators of deer in the nearby northeastern states of NY and Pennsylvania.............In fact, if Wisconsin really wants to lower the incidence of CWD, they should try to create as favorable a habitat as possible for Wolves so that these key deer predators can knock off as many disease ridden deer as possible.......Optimize biodiversity by reducing the current 15 to 30+ deer per square mile back down to less than 10--- and you will see a drop off in this "crowding fueled" plague

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.startribune.com/wisconsin-dnr-plans-deer-predator-study/393977511/&ct=ga&cd=CAEYACoTNDcyMjMwNDcwNTI1NjkxNjMyODIaZmMyNWRjZGYxNDI0NmQ5MTpjb206ZW46VVM&usg=AFQjCNGgUBK8Go-LPDX9kpMfvV9wzfLSjQ

Natural Resources department to launch deer predator study

State wildlife officials plan to launch a five-year study next month that they say should provide unprecedented data on how predators, chronic wasting disease and other factors affect deer survival in southwestern Wisconsin.

The Department of Natural Resources will begin start the $3 million effort by capturing and placing radio collars on deer predators, such as bobcats and coyotes, in Dane, Iowa and Grant counties in October. The agency will start capturing and collaring deer in January.

Iowa County, Wisconsin in red

OPEN THE LINK BELOW TO SEE WHERE WOLF PACKS LIVE IN WISOCONSIN

AS OF THIS YEAR, NO VERIFIED WOLF SIGHTINGS OR BREEDING PAIRS AS

FAR SOUTH AS IOWA COUNTY

http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/Wildlifehabitat/wolf/documents/2016_Wolf_Detection.pdf

The collars will be equipped with GPS tracking devices that will record and display information on the animals multiple times per day. Plans call for capturing and collaring 200 adult deer, including bucks and does, 100 fawns and 60 predators annually. The agency plans to use staff and trappers to capture and collar predators and hire between 15 to 20 field technicians to capture and collar deer, DNR big-game ecologist Kevin Wallenfang said.

The study should result in unprecedented information on movement, behavior, habitat use and predator-prey survival, DNR Wildlife and Forestry Research Section Chief Scott Hull wrote in a memo to the agency's board.

Deer emaciated due to Chronic Wasting Disease

The study will take place in two areas: One spans the Grant and Iowa county line with low CWD-infection rates, and the other will span a portion of the Iowa and Dane county line where CWD infection rates are high. Running the study in both areas will help DNR scientists better understand how the disease may be interacting with predators and other environmental factors to affect deer survival, Hull wrote.

Chronic wasting disease affects deer's brains, causing them to grow thin, act strangely and ultimately die. It was first found in Wisconsin in 2002 near Mount Horeb. The DNR initially attempted to contain the disease by eradicating as many deer as possible, a plan generated intense public backlash and led to the agency ultimately backing off on eradication.

The DNR's current strategy calls for reducing local herds in isolated areas of infect that appear far from known disease clusters but centers mostly on simply monitoring the disease's spread.

The disease has moved beyond southwestern Wisconsin into 41 of the state's 72 counties. Test results released in March show 9.4 percent of the 3,133 deer tested last year were infected, the highest prevalence rate since the disease's discovery in the state.

The study is part of a series of initiatives Gov. Scott Walker announced in May to bolster CWD surveillance and better understand the disease. The governor called for more studies on deer populations, research investments, a best practices plan for captive deer farms and biannual deer farm fence inspections.

The money for the study will come from federal Pittman-Robertson grants, which are funded through federal sales taxes on guns and ammunition

We humans are almost hard wired to feel that we must "actively manage" our work and homelife for optimum results to occur..........The same philosophy pervades our thinking on re-growing forests after logging /fire/hurricanes/disease or pest infestation destroys them..............New research negates this "active management" paradigm,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,David Foster, our friend and Director of the HARVARD FOREST states that: “Forests have been recovering from natural processes like windstorms, fire, and ice for millions of years"........... "What appears to us as devastation is actually, to a forest, a quite natural and important state of affairs"..........Read below to see why

http://northernwoodlands.org/discoveries/doing-nothing-forest-recovery

Doing Nothing For Forest Recovery

by Todd McLeish

Spring 2013

Discoveries

April 23, 2013

0 Comments

Audrey Barker-Plotkin (far left) and students conducting a survey of the understory vegetation in a hurricane experiment, 20 years after the manipulation. Photo by John Hirsch.

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When a stand of trees is blown down in a storm, the typical practice is to salvage as many saleable trees as possible. But a 20- year study in the Harvard Forest found that if you are just considering the health of the forest ecosystem, the best practice is to do nothing.

“When a forest is damaged by hurricane winds, even if it is quite a big disturbance and looks catastrophic, there are a lot of surviving structures that allow the forest to come back and continue functioning,” said Audrey Barker-Plotkin, site and research coordinator at Harvard Forest and lead author of a study published in the journal Ecology.

In 1990, a team of scientists recreated the effects of the 1938 hurricane in a two acre patch of mature oak forest. Eighty percent of the trees were pulled over with a winch and cable; half the trees died within three years and were left on the ground. The scientists closely monitored the study area for the next 20 years and found a remarkable story of recovery.

“Leaving a damaged forest intact means the original conditions return more readily,” said David Foster, director of the Harvard Forest. “Forests have been recovering from natural processes like windstorms, fire, and ice for millions of years. What appears to us as devastation is actually, to a forest, a quite natural and important state of affairs.”


Hurricane Blowdown of Forest

The abundance of seedlings and saplings that were growing in the forest prior to the study form the bulk of the forest canopy today. But the new forest doesn’t look exactly like the old one. Prior to the study, the forest was dominated by red oak and red maple. “We found no red oak that came in as a seedling or sprout after the disturbance, but we have a few scattered surviving gigantic oaks that still anchor the stand,” said Barker-Plotkin. “The new cohort is mostly black birch.”

The researchers were surprised that only a few early successional species made an appearance as the forest recovered, and even fewer invasive species. Most of the shrubs that became established in the first years after the disturbance died as the forest aged.

Measurements of soil nutrient levels before and after the disturbance found hardly any difference, and the volume of litterfall – a reasonable proxy for forest productivity – came back to predisturbance levels by year six. While the basal area is still lagging behind that of a control site, it is expected to catch up by about year 30.

Despite these results, Barker-Plotkin said there are perfectly good reasons to do salvage logging. “If you’re growing your forest for timber and your valuable timber trees have fallen over, it’s a reasonable course of action to carefully recoup the financial value of the forest. But from the perspective of the health of the forest, it doesn’t need us to clean up after a disaster like this. The forest is going to be fine.”

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https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjK36L825zPAhVJcT4KHSZPBNUQFghBMAU&url=http%3A%2F%2Foregonstate.edu%2Fua%2Fncs%2Farchives%2F2007%2Fapr%2Fslow-reasonably-sure-burned-forest-lands-regenerate-naturally&usg=AFQjCNFtjsGjpIqU41pFxIK1GUuh0y3cgg&bvm=bv.133178914,d.amc

Slow but Reasonably Sure: Burned Forest Lands Regenerate Naturally

04/03/2007

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study of forest lands that burned in the 1990s in northern California and southwestern Oregon has concluded there is a “fair to excellent” chance that an adequate level of conifers will regenerate naturally, in sites that had no manual planting or other forest management.

The research, to be published Wednesday in the Journal of Forestry by scientists from Oregon State University, examined the recovery of conifers on 35 plots that had burned in wildfires from nine to 19 years ago, and generally found a high level of naturally regenerating tree seedlings.


Spruce Budworm killed forest

Although the abundance of natural regeneration appeared to be variable and growth often slow, there was no evidence of recent conifer mortality or suppression leading to seedling death.

Total conifer density and the types of tree species varied quite a bit depending on elevation, but the density of surviving conifer seedlings was as much or more than typical densities in 60- to 100-year-old stands in this region, which is about 100 to 1,000 trees per acre. Traditional old growth forests of this region, with trees 250 or more years old, often had as few as 20-40 large trees per acre.

About 10 percent of the plots studied already had larger trees that were considered “free to grow” by forestry standards. The scientists said the height of competing shrubs had “quite likely” slowed after one or two decades, and “we predict that conifer mortality will remain low and height growth will accelerate as individuals continue to emerge above the shrub layer.” The study also showed that trees would regenerate at considerable distances from seed sources.

“The natural regeneration on many of these sites is actually much higher than needed to restore a forest,” said Jeff Shatford, a senior faculty research assistant in the OSU Department of Forest Science. “We expect that the high density of young trees we observed will thin out naturally over time.”


natural forest regeneration following fire

The authors said in their report that “assertions that burned areas, left unmanaged, will remain unproductive for some indefinite period, seem unwarranted.” Short-term delays in conifer regeneration and a broader range of recovering plant and animal species may also have benefits in terms of varied tree size, plant biodiversity, and wildlife habitat.

“When left to natural regeneration in this region, it appears that conifers may come back more slowly and with more variation than with conventional forest management, but in most cases they do come back,” said David Hibbs, co-author of the report and a professor of forest ecology and silviculture in the OSU Department of Forest Science. “There may be some cases, especially on the lowest, hottest, south-facing slopes, where that is not true.

“But at most elevations and in most situations, natural conifer regeneration appears to be working.”

Whether lands should be planted and weed competition controlled is more a question of short-term timber production, tree species control and forest management goals than the regeneration of the forest, the scientists said.

The sites picked for this study all met several criteria: They had gone through a hot, canopy-replacing wildfire from nine to 19 years ago, more than 90 percent of the trees were killed in the fire, and there was no post-fire salvage logging or tree planting. The sites were on the Klamath, Rogue/Siskiyou or Umpqua National Forests.

Conifer trees that naturally regenerated were dominated by Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine at lower elevations, and true firs at higher elevations. There was considerable variation in the regeneration process. Some sites filled in immediately. Others had a few years delay, then rapid filling; some were slow but constant; and a few sites never filled. Surprising to researchers was that up to 19 years after a fire, there was still some new and locally dominant conifer regeneration.

Seed was provided by patches of surviving trees or nearby unburned forest, which were rarely more than a few hundred yards from fire-killed trees. The relationship of shrub competition with tree seedlings also was surprising. On low and middle elevation sites, there were actually more conifers where there was more shrub and hardwood cover; what favored one group also seemed to favor the other. At higher elevations, shrub cover was less of an issue and the abundance of conifer regeneration was conspicuously high. At some high-elevation sites, trees continued to establish in great numbers – even many years after the fire.

In continued research, OSU scientists said they plan to study more specifically what sites will grow into mature forests and what species will persist there, and also more directly compare the progress of natural regeneration with that of managed sites.

This study was funded by the Joint Fire Science Program, a partnership of six federal wildland, fire and research organizations.

Fire suppression and fuel buildups, among other possible causes, have led to an increasing frequency and severity of forest fire in the western United States, the researchers said. Between 1970 and 2004, more than 600 wildfires burned more than 20 million acres in Oregon and California. The 2002 Biscuit Fire, in terrain similar to where this research was done, was one of the largest fires in Oregon’s recorded history.

The recovery of burned lands after wildfire, and whether active management is necessary, has become a point of considerable interest and controversy in recent years. Some studies have argued that, in the absence of aggressive management, burned areas might turn into unproductive shrub fields that could persist for decades or centuries.

“In contrast to expectations, we found natural conifer regeneration to be generally abundant across a variety of settings,” the scientists wrote in the new study. “Management plans can benefit greatly from utilizing natural conifer regeneration, but managers must face the challenge of long regeneration periods, and be able to accommodate high levels of variation across the landscape of a fire.”