2nd Announcement

A Workshop for

Creating Stand-Level Prescriptions to Integrate Ecological & Fuel Management Objectives for
Dry Forests of the Eastern Cascade Range

October 13-15, 2009
Eagle Crest Resort Redmond, Oregon

This workshop will bring together practitioners from multiple disciplines to discuss and develop stand-level prescriptions that further conservation of the northern spotted owl (NSO) and integrate ecological and fuel management objectives for dry forest restoration in the eastern Cascades of Washington, Oregon and California.  An intended long-term outcome of the workshop is the implementation of treatment objectives and strategies developed during this workshop in a network of management study sites across the geographic and ecological breadth of the eastern Cascades.

Intended Audience
Biologists, silviculturists, fuel and fire specialists, forest entomologists and pathologists, ecologists, planners, managers, and others responsible for planning and implementing treatments  intended to conserve northern spotted owls, restore ecological processes, and reduce the potential for significant wildfire impacts in dry-forest ecosystems.

Workshop Objectives

• Define fuel, silvicultural, wildlife, and other ecological objectives for high-quality owl habitat (i.e. Recovery Action 6) and for other dry-forest types (i.e. Recovery Action 7).
• Describe silvicultural options, tools, and procedures to meet those objectives.
• Discuss implementation of prescriptions and the long-term goal to create a management study template, monitoring elements, and a regional management study network of sites to gain reliable data and knowledge about the effectiveness or validity of prescriptions.  

Additional information and post-workshop materials can be found under the “Dry Forest Workshop Series: 2009 Workshop” link at http://www.fws.gov/oregonfwo/FieldOffices/Bend/.

Registration required! 

Arrangements
Registration:  There is no fee for the workshop, but you need you to register in advance so we can adequately plan for group discussions, etc.  Please complete the registration form and email the completed version to Sue_Livingston@fws.gov.  Please register by October 2. Register by September 3 if you are applying for a travel grant (see below). Plan to come even if you miss the registration deadline, but please contact Sue Livingston so we can anticipate attendance.

Lodging: The meeting will be held at the Eagle Crest Resort, Redmond, Oregon.  We have reserved a block of rooms at the government rate (see table below).  Rooms will be held at these rates until September 12, after which, rates can not be assured.  You must make your own reservations by calling 800-682-4786.  When making reservations, use group code 43U4MJ. You may also reserve online at http://www.eagle-crest.com/, but you will be charged a deposit.

 
Speakers:  We will have a laptop and computer projector to give your presentation.  If you have other needs, contact Sue Livingston at Sue_Livingston@fws.gov. 

Travel Grants
The Joint Fire Science Program has given the Workshop a grant to fund travel for people who might not be able to participate for lack of travel funds.  Travel grants are open to any person who wants to attend the meeting.  Most agency people should plan to use their own funds to attend, if possible.  Please be sparing in your requests so we can help as many people as possible and to increase your chances of getting a grant.  For example, you might elect to share a room or suite.  See the registration page to apply.  Apply no later than Sept. 3.

Applying for a travel grant does not guarantee that you will receive the grant or a portion of the grant.  Our goal is to use the funds to make the workshop available to all those interested in attending.  If grant requests exceed the availability of funds, grant awards will be prioritized by level of participation in the workshops, potential for agency/organization support, and amount requested.  If you requested a travel grant, we will notify you by September 8 if you received the grant and the amount received (Note: This date is a change from September 15 noted in the first announcement).  We will then reserve your requested lodging with Eagle Crest by the September 12 room-hold cutoff.  If you received only partial reimbursement of lodging, you will be responsible for paying the difference when you arrive at the conference.  If you apply for a grant to reimburse lodging costs, you may choose to make your own reservation with Eagle Crest and use your own credit card to hold the room until we notify you as to whether or not you received the grant. Contact John Lehmkuhl (jlehmkuhl@fs.fed.us) for information on travel grants.

Detailed Description of 2009 Workshop

This workshop will strive to initiate a long-term (10-year) program of collaboration between managers and scientists to rapidly accelerate the development of effective and ecologically sound dry forest management in the Eastern Cascade Range.   In addition to restoration of stable fire regimes and ecological conditions, the program and its results on the ground will promote recovery of the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO), as described in the Northwest Forest Plan and the NSO Recovery Plan (2008).   The workshop and subsequent program will be coordinated by the interagency Eastern Cascades Dry Forest Landscape Working Group formed under the NSO Recovery Plan and lead by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

This workshop continues efforts begun during workshops in Redmond, OR, (2005), Ashland, OR, (2006), and Wenatchee, WA (2007) that brought together fuel specialists, silviculturists, and wildlife biologists to discuss and develop integrated landscape and stand-level management strategies and practices.  The proposed workshop will focus specifically on several stand-level needs and recommendations from earlier workshops:

• Better integrate NSO, prey, silviculture and fire objectives.
• Provide prescription and implementation guidelines for managers.
• Develop implementation strategies.
• Link scientists and managers to understand short- and long-term treatment impacts through monitoring and research.
• Hold future workshops to continue the dialogue.

The workshop will address long-standing and current issues related to fire and fuel management practices in Late-Successional Reserves and Matrix Forest under the Northwest Forest Plan.  The workshop also will directly address Recovery Actions in the 2008 Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl.  Recovery Action 6 requires the maintenance and restoration of high-quality NSO habitat. Recovery Action 7 describes habitat management outside high-quality owl habitat as: intensive management to protect high-quality habitat, and management to reduce fire risk while maintaining the capacity for rapid development of and replacement of high-quality owl habitat.  Both recovery actions will require novel silvicultural and fuel treatment approaches to restore, protect, or develop owl habitat, and to manage for overall dry forest integrity.  The need for novel prescriptions is all the more urgent considering the uncertain effects of climate change on forest development under both passive and active conventional management.  Integral to the proposed program will be implementation of Recovery Action 10 (restoration of habitat elements like snags) and Recovery Action 11 (design and conduct experiments).  This workshop will focus on stand-level management practices as the building blocks for landscape management.  Landscape planning issues and methods will be discussed for context and may be the topic for a  future workshop.

The workshop will promote interagency coordination and collaboration across the Eastern Cascades region.  Regional coordination of silvicultural practices, and monitoring design and implementation as adaptive management studies, will lead to rapid, consistent, and reliable development of effective management practices.  In the absence of a coordinated effort, progress toward NSO recovery and ecosystem management of dry forests will be slow, haphazard, and uncertain.  The alternative to our organized approach for effective management is a hodge-podge of unconnected efforts that treat many acres, but from which we learn little about the effectiveness or validity of our actions for forest health and species conservation.   

Goals

The goal of the workshop is to initiate long-term (10-year) regional collaboration between managers and scientists to develop and test forest restoration prescriptions that integrate ecological objectives specifically related to NSO conservation in dry forests of the eastern Cascade Range in Washington, Oregon, and northern California.   We have learned quite a bit about the dry forest from local experience and research: now is the time to put all that together in a coherent and coordinated program that uses adaptive learning to accelerate progress toward effective dry forest management and NSO conservation. 

We intend a long-term outcome from the workshop to be the establishment of a network of management study sites that replicate treatment objectives and strategies that we develop in this workshop across the geographic and ecological breadth of the region, similar to the successful Fire and Fire Surrogate and the Birds and Burns studies. Several of the participants in our workshop have been involved in those studies, and they will bring their rich experience to bear on our efforts. 

Such a network of study sites with common objectives, prescriptions, and monitoring would be a powerful learning tool for managers and scientists to rapidly improve science-based management strategies and practices, and for convincing critics that land managers are serious about effective conservation management.  The challenge of this task will be creating a sufficiently specific and powerful, yet flexible, framework that allows for regional variation in forest vegetation, environment, and societal needs.

Objectives

• Define restoration, fuel, silvicultural, wildlife, and other ecological objectives for high-quality owl habitat (i.e. Recovery Action 6) and for other dry-forest types (i.e. Recovery Action 7).
• Describe silvicultural options, tools, and procedures to meet those objectives.
• Discuss implementation of prescriptions and the long-term goal to create a management study template, monitoring elements, and a regional management study network of sites to gain reliable data and knowledge about the effectiveness or validity of prescriptions.

Products

(1) Publish a Forest Service general technical report (GTR) that details the outcomes and recommendations of the workshop.  The GTR will probably not be a proceedings, rather a synthesis to the workshop issues, discussions, and recommendations.
(2) Post on a website abstracts and PowerPoint files of presentations. 
(3) Consider publishing a synthesis paper in a peer-reviewed journal, such as BioScience or Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.  Authors will be participants who are interested in contributing to the paper. 

Workshop Organizers & Contacts

Sue Livingston, US Fish & Wildlife Service, Portland, OR - (503) 231-6179.  Sue_Livingston@fws.gov

John Lehmkuhl,  US Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Wenatchee, WA - (509) 664-1737.  jlehmkuhl@fs.fed.us

John Bailey, College of Forestry, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR - (541) 737-1497. John.Bailey@oregonstate.edu

Eric Knapp, US Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Redding, CA - (530) 226-2555. eknapp@fs.fed.us

Karl Halupka, US Fish & Wildlife Service, Wenatchee, WA - (509) 665-3508 ext. 11.  Karl_Halupka@fws.gov

Bill Gaines, Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, Wenatchee, WA - (509) 664-9232.  wgaines@fs.fed.us