Monitoring Conservation Success in a Large Oak Woodland Landscape

Monitoring is essential in understanding the success or failure of a conservation project and provides the information needed to conduct adaptive management. Although there is a large body of literature on monitoring design, it fails to provide sufficient information to practitioners on how to organize and apply monitoring when implementing landscape-scale conservation projects. We describe a decision framework currently being developed by The Nature Conservancy. It can be used to help set monitoring goals, prioritize monitoring efforts, and select monitoring metrics. Monitoring goals should be organized around at least three purposes. First, they should be closely tied to each specific conservation action and measure progress in implementing that activity. Second, monitoring should measure the impact the strategy has on abating its targeted threat. Third, the measures should test and validate the assumptions made regarding how the natural community functions. We provide examples of how these three types of monitoring are being applied to a large blue oak woodland landscape in the Lassen Foothills of northern California. Introduction Monitoring, the repeated measurement of variables over time and space, is an essential component of understanding the eventual success or failure of any conservation project. It also provides the foundation for an adaptive management approach to project activities (Christensen and others 1996). The act of monitoring in the context of conservation projects, however, is both complex and multi-faceted. It could include measures which provide information on threats, the condition of conservation targets, legal compliance, and testing hypotheses about how an ecosystem functions. Monitoring projects in large landscapes are further complicated by the fact that they occur within and across complex ecological systems with multiple anthropogenic threats. Consequently, more than a single conservation strategy is often employed in an attempt to abate those threats. Although there is abundant literature regarding monitoring methods (Elzinga and others 1998, Thompson and others 1998), a significant challenge for conservation practitioners working in large landscapes is the design of efficient and affordable monitoring programs which can assess progress towards achieving 1 An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the Fifth Symposium on Oak Woodlands: Oaks in California's Changing Landscape, October 22-25, 2001, San Diego, California. 2 Senior Ecologist, Lassen Foothills Project, The Nature Conservancy, 958 Washington St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 (e-mail: [email protected]) 3 Graduate student, Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616 (e-mail: [email protected]) 4 Graduate student, Energy and Resources Group, 310 Barrows Hall, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 (e-mail: [email protected]) USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-184. 2002. 639 Monitoring Oak Woodland Landscapes—Reiner, Underwood, and Niles conservation goals. We propose that monitoring programs have the highest chance of success if they arise from a well-organized conservation plan and continually provide feedback to managers. Given that there are few examples of successful monitoring programs and a much larger number of failures (Gibbs and others 1999, Yoccoz and others 2001), we describe a decision framework which can be used to help project managers set monitoring goals, prioritize monitoring efforts, and select monitoring metrics in a large landscape scale project. This framework is based on ideas being developed by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) as they attempt to design a monitoring framework to support TNC’s emerging Conservation by Design methodology (TNC 2000, 2001). We present some of these ideas, and illustrate their current or anticipated application (presented in boxes) to a large oak woodland conservation project in the Lassen Foothill region of Tehama County, California. Study Area Blue oak (Quercus douglasii) woodland is a biologically rich and widespread vegetation community found primarily in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the southern Cascade, the eastern foothills of the Coast Range and the Transverse Range (Barbour and Major 1988, Standiford and Tinnin 1996). Despite its vast spatial extent, the landscape’s rolling topography and proximity to valley urban centers has focused development pressure in the blue oak woodlands. Additionally, most of this woodland occurs on private ranch land which is increasingly being subdivided for housing or converted to vineyards and orchards. This trend is encouraged by poor returns in the cattle industry and by aging ranchers passing monetarily valuable properties to heirs with other interests. Unlike California’s conifer forests, few large blue oak woodlands are protected within public parks or other conservation ownerships. The Lassen Foothills oak woodland covers approximately 300,000 acres and is surprisingly intact, primarily because of large private cattle ranch ownerships. The woodland occurs on rocky volcanic soils, and the oaks vary in density from sparse savannas to thick groves. The shrub layer is spotty over much of the landscape and is mostly composed of Ceanothus cuneatus and manzanita’s Arctostphylos sp. The ground layer is predominantly non-native annual grasses mixed with native and introduced forbs. Native perennial grasses such as Nassella pulchra and Aristida sp. are present, but are found only in small scattered patches. Troublesome non-native species which have become common in the region include medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae) and yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis). Wild fires and grazing are important processes in the landscape. Fires occur most often during the hot dry summer months, while cattle graze the woodland from October to late May. Conservation by Design Developing a monitoring plan for a complex project becomes easier if the conservation approach is clearly organized. The Nature Conservancy uses an approach called Conservation by Design to select and plan its projects (TNC 2000). TNC’s vision is to conserve a portfolio of functional conservation areas within and across ecoregions. We define ecoregions as relatively large units of land containing a USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-184. 2002. 640 Monitoring Oak Woodland Landscapes—Reiner, Underwood, and Niles distinct assemblage of natural communities and species. Site selection within ecoregions is an iterative process built around five steps: