- Author: Emily C. Dooley, UC Davis
Research shows land managers should clean nest boxes in autumn to avoid disturbing the raptors
When it comes to American barn owls, forget spring cleaning.
The best time of year to clean out nest boxes to ready them for breeding pairs is the fall months of September through November, according to research out of the University of California, Davis, that analyzed nearly a century of banding and other records.
In a paper published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, researchers found that the median egg laying date for barn owls (Tyto furcata) in California...
/h3>- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Wildfires are an increasing threat to people's lives, property and livelihoods, especially in rural California communities. Cannabis, one of California's newer and more lucrative commercial crops, may be at a higher risk of loss from wildfire because it is mostly confined to being grown in rural areas, according to new research by scientists in the Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management at UC Berkeley.
"Our findings affirm that cannabis agriculture is geographically more threatened by wildfire than any other agricultural crop in California,” said Christopher Dillis, lead author of the
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
The 8th California Oak Symposium will be held Oct. 31–Nov. 3 in San Luis Obispo, and anyone involved in research, education, management or conservation of California's oak woodlands is invited to participate.
The theme of the symposium is “Sustaining California Oak Woodlands Under Current and Future Conditions.” The four-day event's 62 concurrent session talks and 30 posters will cover climate change, wildlife ecology, oak restoration, oak pests and diseases, fire ecology, and ranch management and generational transfer.
Oak scientists, foresters, tribal members, land managers, policymakers and other interested individuals will gather to discuss...
- Author: Lorena Anderson, UC Merced
Mechanical thinning of overstocked forests, prescribed burning and managed wildfire now being carried out to enhance fire protection of California's forests provide many benefits, or ecosystem services, that people depend on.
In a paper published in Restoration Ecology, researchers at UC Merced, UC ANR and UC Irvine reported that stakeholders perceived fire protection as central to forest restoration, with multiple other ecosystem services also depending on wildfire severity. Researcher Max Eriksson, lead author on the paper, noted that "forest restoration involves multiple...
- Author: Susie Kocher
The new El Dorado/Amador Prescribed Burn association, formed in August 2021, has conducted several burns with private landowners and received funding for a part-time coordinator.
A new group of local residents dedicated to helping private landowners conduct prescribed burns on their own properties has formed in El Dorado and Amador Counties. The group was convened by Susie Kocher, forestry advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension in the Central Sierra.
“Prescribed Burn Associations, or PBAs, are groups of landowners helping each other to both learn how to use prescribed fire to manage their properties and to...