Surging wildfires across the globe are contributing to escalating residential losses and have major social, economic, and ecological consequences. The highest losses in the U.S. occur in southern California, where nearly 1000 homes per year have been destroyed by wildfires since 2000. Wildfire risk reduction efforts focus primarily on fuel reduction and, to a lesser degree, on house characteristics ...

Chaparral shrublands in southern California, US, exhibit significant biodiversity but are prone to large,intense wildfires. Debate exists regarding fuel reduction to prevent such fires in wildland areas, but the effects of these fires on fauna are not well understood. We studied whether fire severity and distance from unburned fire perimeter influenced recovery of the small-mammal community from 13 to ...

Despite the scarcity of sustained funding to promote continuous record collection, scientists and citizens around the world are now generating large volumes of monitoring data that vary in quality, format, supporting documentation, and accessibility.  Complex interactions between climate, fauna, flora, and human land use challenge the understanding and forecasting of the mechanisms of change.  Diverse models are now being run ...

Biodiversity conservation in an era of global change and scarce funding benefits from approaches that simultaneously solve multiple problems.  Here, we discuss conservation management of the island scrub-jay (Aphelocoma insularis), the only island-endemic passerine species in the continental United States, which is currently restricted to 250-square-kilometer Santa Cruz Island, California. Although the species is not listed as threatened by state ...

Natural resource managers are often challenged with balancing requirements to maintain wildlife populations and to reduce risks of catastrophic or dangerous wildfires. This challenge is exemplified in the Sierra Nevada of California, where proposals to thin vegetation to reduce wildfire risks have been highly controversial, in part because vegetation treatments could adversely affect an imperiled population of the fisher (Martes ...