Working on the ground to improve wildlife habitat

Service partners with researchers, other agencies on ways to reduce fire dangers and improve habitat in California's East Bay hills

Land managers, biologists and local agencies are working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on strategies to reduce the threat of fire and enhance habitat for threatened species in the hills east of California's San Francisco Bay.

The brush-choked hills and canyons of the East Bay are some of the most fire-prone areas in the West and an increasingly popular place for urban development. They are also habitat for a wide variety of native – and often imperiled – plants and animals.

Pallid Manzanita

Alameda Whipsnake

Now, wildlife and fire experts are testing the feasibility of using controlled fires and other measures to prevent destructive wildfires. Those measures could also improve habitat for a variety of sensitive species, from the Alameda whipsnake to the pallid manzanita and the Contra Costa manzanita.

The studies are being conducted under guidelines prepared by the Fish and Wildlife Service, including the Draft Recovery Plan for Chaparral and Scrub Community Species East of San Francisco Bay.

Researchers and officials hope to come up with recommended procedures, or protocols, for controlled burns and other brush-thinning actions that can be carried out throughout the range of the threatened Alameda whipsnake. That habitat stretches across hilly portions of Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Joaquin counties.

Contra Costa Water District, in close cooperation with the Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies, conducted a controlled burn on Mallory Ridge above Los Vaqueros Reservoir. The 30-acre test fire had several purposes, from assessing its impact on wildlife to determining the best times and seasons for igniting small, low-intensity burns.

Low-intensity controlled burn
near Los Vaqueros Reservoir

Don Hankins & Karen Swaim work on soil temperature probe

Controlled, or "prescribed," fires are a tool firefighters and biologists use to thin trees and brush that could fuel a large and potentially catastrophic wildfire. Other fire-prevention measures include mechanical thinning of brush and the cutting of fire breaks.

Prior to the test burn, consulting biologist Karen Swaim led several biologists from the Service's Sacramento field office through thick stands of chaparral in search of areas to implant temperature probes. These probes recorded soil temperatures during the burn and helped Swaim evaluate how the whipsnake reacts to fire.

"The whipsnake and other species," she says, "are adapted for fire and actually do better when their habitat burns occasionally."

Researchers believe – and are conducting studies to confirm – that whipsnakes survive low-intensity fires by waiting them out in underground burrows dug by ground squirrels or gophers.

By clearing heavy brush, controlled fires can create a mosaic of young and old habitat more suitable for the whipsnake. Additionally, some species of plants must have what biologists call a "routine disturbance regime" – such as low-intensity fires – to reproduce and stay healthy.

Firefighter ignites controlled
fire on Mallory Ridge

"Fire prevention and fire and fuels management can actually benefit species and improve habitat," says Swaim, who has been studying the Alameda whipsnake for the last 12 years. "So many of these species were adapted to fire," Swaim says.

Conducted in the late winter, when much of the vegetation was still green, the controlled fire failed to ignite the way organizers had hoped. Still, the test was a success, because it helped fire agencies better understand how to time and manage such blazes, says Ed Stewart, manager of the Los Vaqueros watershed for the Contra Costa Water District.

"It was very, very instructive," he says of the burn.