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.
Sophie S. Parker, Linnea S. Hall, Mary J. Whitfield, Laura Riege, Kathryn R. Selm, René Corado
This paper presents results from a field-based study that can be used to benefit songbirds in riverside habitats like those found along the Santa Clara River in Ventura County, California. Songbirds…
Maria C. Viteri, Elizabeth A. Hadly
This paper investigates the ability of small protected spaces to conserve small mammal diversity in urban areas. The authors identified small mammal bones from both modern owl pellets and…
Sophie S. Parker, Bradley Franklin, Brian S. Cohen, Melissa M. Rohde, Michael Clifford, Andrew Williams
Climate change will cause severe financial, social, and environmental upheaval if a massive reduction in carbon emissions is not achieved by 2030. To address this challenge, rechargeable lithium-ion…
Christopher J. Lortie, Maria Florencia Miguel, Alessandro Filazzola, Harry Scott Butterfield
Climate change, drought, and water scarcity are driving major land transformations in dryland ecosystems globally. Historically these ecosystems have been disproportionately degraded due to widespread…
D. Richard Cameron, Carrie A. Schloss, David M. Theobald, Scott A. Morrison
Protecting or restoring habitat connectivity in landscapes undergoing rapid environmental change requires multiple conservation and restoration strategies. These strategies have different risk…
Carrie Schloss, Dick Cameron, Elizabeth McGovern
As declines in biodiversity are further exacerbated by changing climate conditions, it is critical to ensure that plants and animals are resilient to the effects of climate change. This means…
Carrie A. Schloss, D. Richard Cameron, Brad H. McRae, David M. Theobald, and Aaron Jones
Plant and animal species are already shifting their ranges in response to a changing climate. Maintaining connectivity between present habitat and suitable habitat in the future will become…
Case study by: K.D. Holl, G.H. Golet
Advancing conservation requires understanding the constraints imposed on natural systems by human societies. This understanding typically comes from engagement with local stakeholders, as opposed…
O.J. Robinson, V. Ruiz-Gutierrez, M.D. Reynolds, G.H. Golet, M. Strimas-Mackey and D. Fink
Information on species’ habitat associations and distributions, across wide spatial and temporal scales, is fundamental for guiding conservation. Yet these data are often in short supply. In…
Moses Katkowski, H. Scott Butterfield, John Knapp, Kelly Easterday, Laura Riege, Mark Reynolds
This 5-year action plan describes the vision for invasive plant species mapping, monitoring and treatment at the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve in Sourthern California. The plan is adaptive and…
Maria C Viteri, Mary Allison Stegner, Elizabeth A. Hadly
Biodiversity monitoring is a core part of conservation practice, however all sampling methods include biases. In particular, small mammal live-trapping, the field standard, produces highly skewed…
Elizabeth S. Forbes, Peter S. Alagona, Andrea J. Adams, Sarah E. Anderson, Kevin C.Brown, Jolie Colby, Scott D. Cooper, Sean M. Denny, Elizabeth H.T. Hiroyasu, Robert Heilmayr, Bruce E. Kendall, Jennifer A. Martin, Molly Hardesty-Moore, Alexis M. Mychajliw, Brian P. Tyrrell, Zoë S.Welch
Species reintroductions in a changing world are difficult and highly uncertain. This paper introduces a framework to assess habitat suitability using historic, geographic, and taxonomic analogies to…
Alyssa E. Semerdjian, H. Scott Butterfield, Robert Stafford, Michael F. Westphal, William T. Bean
This paper in the Journal of Wildlife Management combines nearly 20 years of remote sensing, field/trapping, and modeling data to develop a new approach to the identification and prioritization of…
Christopher J. Lortie, Alessandro Filazzola, Charlotte Brown, Jacob Lucero, Mario Zuliani, Nargol Ghazian, Stephanie Haas, Malory Owen, H. Scott Butterfield, Emmeleia Nix, Michael Westphal
There are many pressures that influence the ecological capacity and health of drylands around the world. Shrubs are often a critical component of these systems and can function positively as…
H. Scott Butterfield, T. Rodd Kelsey, and Abigail K. Hart, Editors
As the world population grows, so does the demand for food, putting unprecedented pressure on agricultural lands. At the same time, climate change, soil degradation, and water scarcity mean that…
Tom Baribault, Daniel Porter, Jessica Burton Desrocher, Douglas Larmour, Mark Rasmussen, Roy Anderson
The Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative (TCSI) area has seen recent megafires and is highly developed, making the risk new of human-caused wildfire ignitions high. In this report, experts from Mason Bruce…
Daniel Porter, Robert Longcor
Forests of the Sierra Nevada and across the western U.S. are under unprecedented threat from catastrophic wildfire, insect outbreaks, and drought. In this briefing paper, which was developed as a…
Sophie S. Parker, Andy Zdon, William T. Christian, Brian S. Cohen, Maura Palacios Mejia, Naomi S. Fraga, Emily E. Curd, Kiumars Edalati, Mark A. Renshaw
This paper presents results from the Mojave Desert Springs research project, and discusses why the conservation of these groundwater-dependent ecosystems is so critical to biodiversity. The authors…