Nearly half of California is protected in some land status that prevents most kinds of intensive human land uses. These lands support extensive natural habitats, and for many species, are a critical stronghold in an increasingly human-dominated world.
Yet, changes in the landscape in and near these places have left many in a degraded and precarious condition. Catastrophic wildfire, invasive species, and climate change threaten vast swathes of the state. Protected lands are becoming increasingly isolated by urban and agricultural development, roads, and other infrastructure. Such obstacles can limit a species’ ability to move to across the landscape and adapt to climate change.
Conservancy scientists are working to enhance the resiliency of protected lands in the face of rapid change, and to maintain the landscape connections necessary for plants and animals to adapt over time.
This map and a series of others in the Conservancy's 2010 Mojave Desert Ecoregional Assessment have played a guiding role in siting—and mitigating the impacts of—renewable energy development throughout the Mojave Desert. The Assessment helped shape the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan. Completed and signed in 2016, the…
John M. Randall, Sophie S. Parker, James Moore, Brian Cohen, Laura Crane, Bill Christian, Dick Cameron, Jason B. Mackenzie, Kirk Klausmeyer, Scott Morrison
Regional conservation planning is critical to inform land and resource use decisions. The Mojave Desert Ecoregional Assessment represents an important advance in such planning, because of how its output characterized not just areas of high conservation value, but how conservation values distributed and graded across…
CL Burdett, KR Crooks, DM Theobald, KR Wilson, EE Boydston, LM Lyren, RN Fisher, TW Vickers, SA Morrison, WM Boyce
Long-term studies of animal movement can generate data that allow for robust modeling of habitat use by the species. This study characterizes and maps the distribution of habitat for mountain lions in coastal southern California, and combines those data with models of projected urban growth…
John P. Parkes, David S.L.Ramsey, Norman Macdonald, Kelvin Walker, Sean McKnight, Brian S.Cohen, Scott A. Morrison
This paper describes the approach, planning, and field implementation of an intensive effort to eradicate a population of feral pigs from an island. Key elements of the project included comprehensive data collection of all field effort and outcomes, and comprehensive use of helicopters in nearly…
Oberbauer, T., L. Luna Mendoza, N. Citlali Oliveres, L. Barbosa Deveze, I. Granillo Duarten, S.A. Morrison
Guadalupe Island in Mexico is undergoing a dramatic ecological recovery following the eradication of feral goats. Unfortunately, that eradication came too late for some species and ecosystems, and almost too late for others. The precariousness of some of its extant biota is illustrated by its…
Kathryn M. Langin, T. Scott Sillett, Jongmin Yoon, Helen R. Sofaer, Scott A. Morrison, Cameron K. Ghalambor
Island archipelagos can provide useful opportunities for comparative studies in ecology. For example, breeding ecology of a songbird was studied on two of the California Channel Islands, which share many environmental attributes, such as general vegetation types, but differ in other ways, such as intra-…
Victoria J. Bakker, Daniel F. Doak, Gary W. Roemer, David K. Garcelon, Timothy J. Coonan, Scott A. Morrison, Colleen Lynch, Katherine Ralls, Rebecca Shaw
Population models can be a critical tool in managing recovery of endangered species. This paper presents an analysis that became the foundation of recovery planning and tracking for the endangered island fox. By combining data from research and long-term monitoring efforts across the six islands…
DSL Ramsey, J Parkes, SA Morrison
Populations at very low abundance can be very difficult to detect. Consequently, one of the biggest challenges of eradication projects is determining whether an inability to detect the species at the presumed end of a project means that it has been completely removed. A helpful…
Scott Morrison, Walter Boyce
Critical for biodiversity conservation is the retention of ecological connectivity in the landscape, so that wildlife—and the natural processes that sustain wildlife—can move around. Ideally, that cohesion would be protected by conserving landscape-scale linkages—large swaths of relatively intact habitat joining core reserve lands. Where linkages…
Caroline Christian , Lawrence Saslaw, H. Scott Butterfield
To better understand the ecological role of cattle grazing in managing Carrizo Plain National Monument, we initiated a long-term study in 1997 designed to evaluate the effects of cattle grazing on native plant communities and giant kangaroo rats. Contrary to grazing studies conducted elsewhere in…
Eradication of invasive non-native species is often necessary to protect island ecosystems. Eradication efforts can nonetheless be risky investments. How they are planned and implemented can greatly reduce the risk of failure. Santa Cruz Island provides an interesting case study in eradication, because a variety…
Scott A. Morrison, Norman Macdonald, Kelvin Walker, Lynn Lozier, M Rebecca Shaw
One of the greatest challenges in pest eradication is knowing when it has been achieved. This paper discusses why that is challenging, and why it is so important to consider how that challenge will be met before any eradication effort is initiated. For many vertebrates,…
Scott A. Morrison, Douglas T. Bolger, T. Scott Sillett
Fragmentation-sensitive species – those that tend to disappear when their habitat is fragmented – pose particular challenges for conservation, in part because fragmentation ushers in such a wide array of ecological changes. This study focuses on one such species, examining whether its annual survivorship is…