February 2025 CBI Newsletter

Wildfire in the Built Environment

Just days ago, some of the most destructive wildfires in California history have been contained in the Los Angeles area. Given the magnitude of impact, it should be no surprise that in these early days of the post-fire investigations, there has been a multitude of misinformation, confusion, and finger-pointing circulating in the media. Over the past month, many media outlets have turned to CBI Senior Research Ecologist, Dr. Alexandra Syphard, to provide their audiences with her world renowned research-based perspective on these devastating fires. We have summarized some of her salient insights for you in this month’s newsletter.

While climate change is most certainly a contributing factor to the current fires in Southern California, the circumstances that led to these fires are more complex than any single factor. Pre-existing seasonal weather patterns of drought and wind combined with population changes, land usage, vegetation, the built environment, and recreation patterns all contribute to the vulnerability of the region to large-scale, destructive fires.

When many of us hear the word “wildfire”, we think of forest fires. However, the majority of Southern California is not a forested ecosystem, and most structures lost to California wildfires are in non-forested ecosystems. California is dominated by chaparral (shrubland) ecosystems, and in Southern California, much of the chaparral landscape has been aggressively invaded by non-native grass species. Chaparral ecosystems have adapted to a fire regime of high intensity fires that occur at low frequency intervals, historically seeing at least 30 years between burns. However, grasslands naturally experience far more frequent fire cycles, often only 1-5 years between fires.

A key component in understanding the fires in Southern California is understanding the dynamic between the native and non-native species in these areas. When they do burn, evergreen shrublands burn at high intensities, and grasses are extraordinarily flammable. When grasses ignite, they act as kindling to the chaparral, which can generate the ember load that carries firebrands kilometers ahead of a fire front (even over 10-lane freeways) during extreme wind conditions. Chaparral will recover well after infrequent, high-intensity wildfires. However, non-native grasses colonize those areas quickly. If chaparral cannot recover to overtop them, the grasses persist, adding more high-flammability material to the ecosystem.

Many chaparral species will struggle to recover when the interval between fires shortens, because the dormant, fire-cued seed bank can take up to 20 years to replenish. If fires recur before then, there will be insufficient seed stock, ultimately preventing regeneration and paving the way for even more non-native grasses to invade.

Southern California experienced a host of climatic conditions leading to the fires that erupted on January 7th, but none of these conditions are unprecedented and most are common to the region.

First, there are the high speeds of the Santa Ana winds, spreading embers for up to 2 miles, which expedited the growth of the fires, making them extremely challenging to fight. Santa Ana winds are a known aspect of the Southern California climate, with winds picking up regularly every Fall and Winter in the region (gusts commonly reaching 60 mph).

Second, we have heard so much about the drought in the area, yet Southern California’s climate regularly experiences about 6 months of dry weather each year. The La Niña-driven drought in 2024/25 leading up to these fire events was preceded by a very wet El Niño winter weather pattern in 2023/24, meaning there was a large amount of herbaceous vegetation growth that then became very dry during the drought, creating a bulk of abundant flashy fuels, ripe for fire. Again, the El Niño/La Niña hydrologic cycles are to be expected, with an average cycle of 2-7 years between each.

Finally, because lightning storms are very rare in the region, we know that virtually 100% of fires in Southern California are human-caused ignitions, whether that is from a faulty power line, a dropped cigarette butt or sparks from machinery. The more humans, the more potential for ignition- and California’s population has almost doubled in the past 50 years. In other words, while we would like to think that Southern California has experienced a relatively rare “perfect storm” of conditions leading to these devastating fires, in actuality, these conditions co-occur at a reasonably frequent interval. The element of these fires that is relatively rare is the fact that the ignition occurred close to a large metropolitan region, while the region was experiencing severe wind conditions.

Still, it is shocking for most of us to see this scale of fire in a large urban area. We tend to feel safe from wildfires in the city, and in most cases, we are. However, every urban region has edges in which the built environment abuts undeveloped or “wild” land. These wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas represent about one-third of all US housing stock, or about 44 million households.

So, what does science tell us we can do to increase wildfire resiliency for the ⅓ of Southern California households that are in the wildland urban interface?

Defensible Space On and Near Your Property 

• The space within 5 feet of your home should be regularly maintained, kept clear of dry vegetation and debris, and ideally hardscaped with fire-resistant materials such as gravel, concrete, brick, etc… 
• The zone between 5 and 30 feet of your home should be “lean, clean and green”– regularly maintained, pruned and irrigated during periods of drought to ensure the vegetation does not become dried out.
• Between 30 and 100 feet of your home, focus on removal of dead plant material and maintain spacing between plantings.  This zone is the safest location for siting your outbuildings and fuel tanks.
• If your home is on a steep slope, prioritize downslope vegetation management
• If you are in a dense neighborhood in which homes are close together, pay special attention to vegetation management between homes, to limit the risk of fire spreading from home to home.
• Do not leave wood or brush piles near your home
• Consider landscaping your property with native plants, as they tend to be less flammable than many non-native landscaping plants, especially grasses.
• Work with members of your community to help neighbors that may not have the means or ability to create their own defensible space. The more your entire neighborhood is defensible, the safer your home will be.

Home Hardening

• It is ideal to use Class A roofing materials (clay, cement or fiberglass-based) instead of wood shake or shingled roofs.
• Keep your roof and gutters clean of plant debris that can dry out in periods of drought.
• If you have open-eaves on your home, consider retrofitting to create soffited eaves with vents.
• Cover all your attic and basement/crawl space vents with ⅛ inch non-combustible metal mesh screens to prevent embers from entering your home.
• Choose multi-paned windows with tempered glass when you upgrade your windows to limit the risk of glass breakage caused by radiant heat.
• Consider replacing decking with non-combustible materials such as plastic composite decking or fire-retardant-treated wood deck boards.
• Cover your chimney outlet with ⅜ inch screening to prevent embers from leaving your chimney, and keep your flue closed during fire season to prevent embers from entering the home via your chimney.

Advocacy & Zoning

• A major component of creating fire-safe neighborhoods has to do with the zoning of the area. Neighborhood “islands” that are not contiguous with existing developed areas are at higher risk due to more wildland-urban interface exposure. Infill developments tend to be significantly safer. Similarly, neighborhoods that are planned with less flammable landscaping or features between them and the wildland tend to be safer from fire. Features such as golf courses, tennis courts, solar arrays (with well-maintained vegetation) can add to the defensible space for an entire neighborhood. Zoning at the neighborhood/city level (infill, greenspaces like golf courses between wildland and developments).

For more detailed information on how you can better protect your home, we recommend you refer to the Sustainable Defensible Space website.

And- if you’ve like to hear more about this, you can listen to Dr. Syphard’s excellent interview on the Golden State Naturalist podcast episode from Jan. 16th.

What We Accomplished in 2024

Conservation Biology Institute had an exceptionally productive 2024, with a broad array of projects carried out with partners old and new.  As we move forward into the new year, we have paused to reflect upon our successes of the previous year and summarize some of the highlights for you below.

DATA BASIN

Data Basin continues to grow. Early in 2024, Data Basin reached another milestone of 50,000 registered members. The current number of members approaching 56,000 with the number of interactions with the platform is averaging 30,000 per month. Majority of the users are from the US, but users from almost every country in the world continue to visit the system routinely. Also, the content available in the platform continually grows and now provides access to over 35,000 individual datasets. Most importantly, members are successfully using Data Basin to address a wide range of topics, including conservation planning, renewable energy, climate resilience, sustainability, and species recovery.

CONSERVATION IN AGRICULTURE

Supporting USDA Conservation Reserve Program Lands

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is a federally funded land conservation program administered by the USDA Farm Service Agency and currently manages over 25 million acres of private farmland in the US and is looking to expand. Through the integration of science, spatial modeling, and software development, CBI continues to provide support to significantly improve conservation outcomes and efficiency of program management.

California Healthy Soils Initiative and Alternative Manure Management Program Support

Working closely with the California Department of Food and Agriculture, CBI updated and made enhancements to two existing online tools that help process grant applications for farmer support programs aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions- one through enhancements to sequester more carbon through the promotion of soil health and the other through the improved management of farm animal manure.

OUTDOOR RECREATION

Recreation Conflicts with Tribal Rights

Outdoor recreation is an important component of conservation for many reasons; however, many locations are becoming overwhelmed by the numbers of users engaging in a growing list of activities. Furthermore, in some regions such as Washington state, Tribal people’s rights to the land and resources provided by long-standing treaty are becoming increasingly compromised by outdoor recreation activities. CBI has been engaged to work with Tribes and state agencies to find practical solutions to the growing number and intensity of recreation conflicts on finite natural resources.

Assessment Planning Tool for Oregon and Washington Trails

Based on a previous prototype for Deschutes County, Oregon, which resulted in the creation of a web-based decision support tool to improve the management of multi-use trails in the county, CBI has begun to expand this work to incorporate all trails in Oregon and Washington on U.S. Forest Service lands. Work will continue in 2025 with the goal to provide a user-friendly online dashboard, which will allow trail managers to plan and manage for trail sustainability throughout much of the Pacific Northwest. 

RENEWABLE ENERGY & SUSTAINABILITY

Supporting Sustainable Offshore Wind Development in California 

Marine offshore wind energy development presents an opportunity to help California achieve its 100% renewable energy goals. CBI continues to provide data and collaborative platform support using the California Offshore Wind Energy Modeling Platform for the ongoing planning activity.

CEQA Site Check Tool

Site Check is an online tool built to accelerate the production of housing (especially low-income housing) by identifying where existing streamlining options under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) may apply. Site Check allows users to filter parcels based on specific CEQA provisions. The tool is actively being used to accelerate housing development in California while avoiding areas that are environmentally sensitive such as wetlands, rare natural habitats, locations of rare native species, key landscape connectivity corridors, and hazard zones.

Climate Smart Forest Restoration Tools

Seedlot Selection Tool

The Seedlot Selection Tool is a GIS mapping program designed to help forest managers match seedlots with planting sites based on changing climates. The tool, which covers the North American continent, is being actively used to more closely match seedlots with future growing conditions.

USFS Climate Analog Tool

The US Forest Service asked CBI to build upon the aforementioned Seedlot Selection Tool to help increase positive outcomes of their conservation and restoration efforts. The Climate Analog decision support tool will provide forest managers with access to climate-smart generalized seed transfer and vegetative information using 19 different climate variables to accommodate a spectrum of adaptive genetic variation among species to better inform restoration decisions.

WILDFIRE

Global Wildfire Collective

CBI has embarked on the development and launch of the Global Wildfire Collective, an online platform and community being established to facilitate easy access to and sharing of research, publications, data, models and tools among wildfire researchers and operational practitioners.  The platform will support discussion, collaboration and knowledge-sharing across wildfire-related disciplines, ecosystems, and regions.  When established, this will be the only global resource of its kind.

Centro de Conservación Biológica de Operaciones Forestales (CCBOF)

In partnership with the Academia Nacional de Bomberos de Colombia, CBI is embarking on the development of the Centro de Conservación Biológica de Operaciones Forestales (CCBOF), a wildfire research, collaboration and education center to increase regional capacity and expertise across the Americas.  CCBOF will be built upon the Global Wildfire Collective to accelerate advancements in wildfire science and ecology in order to provide practical guidance for policy makers, insurers, community members, fire departments and land owners/managers.  The Academia Nacional de Bomberos de Colombia serves as one of very few Latin America and Caribbean-regional centers for firefighter and community education, having trained firefighters from virtually every country across the LAC-region.

California Wildfire Projects

Sierra Nevada Forest Resilience Decision-Support

CBI completed a series of modeling exercises to assess and predict wildfire impacts in the Sierra Nevada in California.  Unlike previous efforts that focused exclusively on the fuel component of the fire risk modeling, our work introduced the concept of fire-atmospheric coupling which integrates the all-important air component to fuels. Results demonstrate the importance of strategic forest thinning as thinning in some locations can actually make the risk of severe fire worse.

Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition Data Gateway

CBI partnered with Plumas Corporation to develop a new Data Basin Gateway, as a collaborative working space dedicated to sharing and discussing data relevant to the protection of Giant Sequoia groves in the Sierra Nevada that are threatened by climate change. The gateway is currently under review and expected to be publicly launched in 2025.

CALFIRE Impacts Study

Using a vegetation succession model, this project explores how climate change, management actions, and projected residential growth in the wildland urban interface may influence wildfire activity and downstream effects on vegetation type conversion, carbon release, and biodiversity in Southern California forests and shrublands. The resulting maps and spatial products will help managers prioritize locations for conservation action to protect co-benefits to humans and natural resources.

Tuolumne Wildfire Defense Planning

CBI partnered with EN2 Resources, Inc. and the Tuolumne Utilities District (TUD) to develop the TUD Wildfire Defense Plan, a roadmap for addressing wildfire risk to the county’s water system and water treatment facilities. The wildfire risk mitigation plan is meant to guide projects that aim to achieve fuels reduction, habitat enhancement, and recreation benefits in the region, while building resilience for the utility district infrastructure. 

Resilience Planning for Southern California Montane Forests

CBI is partnering with the U.S. Forest Service and San Diego State University to apply the latest research on interactions between multiple disturbances specific to this ecoregion to plan more effective conservation action. The goal is to further develop an actionable strategy to address the many threat (especially wildfire) to these unique forest ecosystems.

SPECIES ASSESSMENT & PLANNING

Southern Sierra Nevada Fisher Conservation Assessment and Strategy 2.0

Stephen’s Kangaroo Rat Monitoring

WDFW Bat and Moth Monitoring

Washington Wildlife Connectivity Mapping

CBI is a partner in producing a statewide wildlife connectivity ensemble model and the associated mapped data in support of a connectivity action plan for the state, which is still under development. The modeling aims to identify priority areas across the state in need of some form of mitigation to promote wildlife connectivity and reduce wildlife/vehicle collisions at the same time.

CBI ASSOCIATES PROGRAM

CBI Associates program was created to allow the organization to partner with researchers and scientists working in the fields of conservation and climate change, to further our reach and impact of science and technology in these fields. In 2024, CBI added two new partners to its Associates lineup. Dr. Chas Jones  has been a trusted partner to Tribes & Indigenous Peoples for 25 years and is nationally recognized as an expert in matters of Tribal Climate Resilience. Dr. Sam Roy is the Creator and Founder of the Awesome Google Earth Engine Community Catalog and serves as the CEO of Spatial Bytes LLC specializing in geospatial data, workflows and analysis. He is currently working with CBI to develop remote sensing models in support of the USDA Conservation Reserve Program.

ALLIANCE OF WORLD SCIENTISTS

COP16

In 2024, CBI was honored to be granted credentials to attend the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) hosted in the city of Cali, Colombia. While in Cali, CBI co-hosted three well-attended panel discussion events, composed of international practitioners with deep experience in the fields of habitat connectivity and linear infrastructure development, renewable energy planning & development and wildfire research and mitigation.  The relationships formed during the event are priceless, and CBI expects to collaborate with a number of the international research, government and NGO organization we met in Cali, to expand the reach of our knowledge, data and tools to other parts of the world.

Wildfire in Latin America

If you’ve been following Conservation Biology Institute’s work, you already know that wildfires are essential processes in many ecosystems, playing a fundamental role in sustaining and evolving biodiversity. However, rapid global changes in climate, vegetation, land use, and land management are shifting fire regimes beyond their natural variability ranges. As a consequence, extreme wildfires are becoming increasingly frequent and severe, causing large-scale human, economic, and ecological losses. In recent years, the planet has witnessed disastrous fires that have significantly altered natural fire regimes impacting many species, destroyed thousands of human-built structures, displaced entire human communities, and caused severe impacts on human health due to persistent and widespread smoke.

In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), uncontrolled fires have transformed landscapes, significantly affecting societies, economies, and the environment. The alteration of fire regimes is leading to profound ecological transformations, particularly in the tropical areas of the continent, posing serious threats to biodiversity and driving species extinction. Wildfires are also altering essential ecosystem services on which humans depend, such as clean air and water supply, soil stability and fertility, climate regulation, numerous cultural services, and more. While climate change is driving the frequency and severity of wildfires, wildfires themselves impact climate change by releasing significant amounts of greenhouse gases and causing the reduction  of previously stable carbon sinks. 

• It is one of the planet’s largest carbon sinks, storing 150B metric tons of carbon, equivalent to 10 years worth of global fossil fuel emissions. Even if the world reduced human-caused emissions enough to get on track to fulfill the Paris Climate Agreement, keeping global warming below a 1.5-degree-C increase from pre-industrial levels, loss of just 20-25% of the Amazon and its stored carbon would put that target out of reach.
• Crops across the planet are dependent on the power of the Amazon’s hydrologic cycle – the forest releases 20B tons of water into the atmosphere each day. Without this, droughts are likely to become significantly more severe in agricultural areas across the globe.
• If you or someone you love has had cancer, they’ve likely been treated with medications that are derived from the Amazon. Of the plants deemed to be useful in the treatment of cancer, 70% only grow in tropical rainforests.
• Those with heart disease in your life are likely taking an ACE Inhibitor medication. This particular medication’s ingredients are derived from a viper species that is native to the Amazon. 
• If you like pineapple, chocolate, sweet potatoes and coffee, odds are that what you’re eating is from tropical regions of Latin America.

Despite these challenges, LAC’s technical and financial capacity to address wildfires is limited. There is an urgent need to strengthen governmental agencies, fire brigades, and local communities with effective prevention, management, and recovery tools and strategies. Interdisciplinary research is required to understand and address the geographically varying causes and consequences of fires, as well as to develop regional systems for collecting and analyzing data to support evidence-based decision-making.

Conservation Biology Institute has partnered with the Academia Nacional de Bomberos de Colombia (Colombian National Firefighting Academy), to establish the Centro de Conservación Biológica de Operaciones Forestales (CCBOF- Latin American Center for Biological Conservation and Forest Operations) in Cali, Colombia. The center will develop novel wildfire research, consolidate existing scientific knowledge and data, educate community members on wildfire risk reduction and response, as well as train firefighters in the latest wildfire management approaches. When it is established, CCBOF will be the only resource of its kind in all of LAC.

While we believe we will be able to secure large financial sponsorship from international development banks and foundations, the effort to obtain this financing takes time and resources. CBI has almost never asked for donation dollars in the past, but this effort is so crucial to the health of the planet, and action must be taken swiftly, so- we are asking you for your help.  Any amount you can give will get us one step closer to helping LAC build wildfire resiliency for their forests, communities and biodiversity.  Thank you in advance for your generosity!

CBI at COP16

A Reflection From Our Executive Director

CBI’s Robin Jones- Executive Director, Dr. Alexandra Syphard- Senior Research Scientist, and Karl Peet- Senior Advisor, Global Strategy, spent the past two weeks participating in the 16th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) in Cali, Colombia.  The country of Colombia and the city of Cali did an extraordinary job of hosting an estimated (and unprecedented) 16,000 participants – the beauty of the region and the hospitality of the people were on full display.  

To put COP16 in a broader context, just prior to the kickoff of the conference, World Wildlife Fund released its Living Planet Report with dismaying news that over 70% of wildlife on the planet has been lost, with more than 95% loss in the Latin American and Caribbean region.  The urgency of all attendees in finding and implementing creative solutions was palpable throughout the event.

While in Cali, CBI co-hosted three well-attended panel discussion events, composed of international practitioners with deep experience in various fields. While the amount of material covered in each discussion was vast, the following paragraphs highlight some insightful elements from each event.  

In our event, co-hosted with Despacio, SabidurAI, and World Resources Institute, entitled, “Leveraging Traditional Knowledge and Modern Technology to Reduce Tropical Deforestation, ‘Ghost Road’ Expansion, and Habitat Fragmentation”, we explored the complexity of issues associated with the buildout of linear infrastructure and its costs and benefits to both humans and biodiversity. We saw an impressive demonstration of advances in remote sensing and artificial intelligence that can provide a far more accurate representation of new road expansion than has been available to scientists and ecologists in the past, and showed just how quickly road expansion is happening in places such as the Congo Basin.  Projeto Reconecta and the Smithsonian National Zoo/Conservation Biology Institute gave us a sneak peek at recent research on the efficacy in man-made crossing bridges in reducing the incidence of fauna death due to vehicle collisions.  

Participants heard two distinctly different perspectives on road expansion, one from Association of Saamaka Traditional Authorities in Suriname, and one from Indigenous-owned Native Root Coffee in Colombia.  The Saamaka people have historically settled along and navigated exclusively by river, and road incursion has been a largely negative development, damaging and leading to deforestation of large swaths of their sacred lands.  Native Root, on the other hand, recognizes the negative impact that linear infrastructure buildout has on their ecosystem, but they are also dependent upon these roads in order to get their product to market.  The discussion that ensued among our panelists and the audience was vibrant and complex.

Next up was a panel discussion entitled “Global Challenges to Sustaining Biodiversity in an Era of Changing Fire Regimes”, co-hosted with CREAF, in which our panelists highlighted the rapid changes in wildfire patterns across the globe from historic fire regimes, and the impact on biodiversity as a result. CBI’s Dr. Alexandra Syphard set the stage by contrasting two distinct ecosystems: montane forests that are adapted for and dependent on relatively frequent fire on the landscape, and mediterranean chaparral which has historically experienced relatively infrequent fire.  In both instances, the frequency of these fires has changed dramatically in the past two decades, leading to dramatically negative impacts on biodiversity, as well as significant risk to human health, safety and infrastructure. 

Reflecting back to our earlier session on linear infrastructure expansion, one of the presenters showcased the close relationship between roads and wildfire in Chile, showing that 90% of fires occur within one kilometer of a road.  We heard evidence that showcased that the world is on the precipice of tipping into a very vicious cycle in which climate change is not only driving massive changes in fire frequency, size and intensity, but it is also becoming a driver of climate change as a very significant emitter of CO2 and destroyer of carbon biomass reserves. 

The local fire agency, Bomberos Voluntarios de Santiago de Cali, provided the firefighter perspective, highlighting how the forests surrounding Cali are burning, often times for the first time, highlighting the need for fire departments across Colombia and all of the LAC region to develop new operational capacity to prevent and fight these fires, often in the absence of scientific research that can guide their management activities. As we left this event, all panelists saw the value of cooperation between academia, fire management agencies, community leadership, policymakers and industry in developing and adopting science-based approaches to best build resiliency for both communities and nature.

Finally, we ended our events in Cali with a highly informative panel discussion on “Protecting Biodiversity & Advancing Renewables Through Energy-Water-Food Synergies”, co-hosted by REN21 and Fundación Bariloche.  The Former Secretaria Nacional de Energía de Panamá 2023-2024 kicked things off by providing detailed statistics on the projected minerals and water required to achieve global net zero 2050 targets through renewable energy infrastructure development.  This starkly highlighted how regions with critical energy transition minerals (Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean) will experience significant additional pressure on their biodiversity as a result of this transition.  This illustrates just how important the implementation of multi-benefit infrastructure such as agrivoltaics, recycling of scarce minerals and most importantly, reduction of energy consumption will be in achieving these goals without dramatic impacts on global biodiversity.  

Panelists discussed the importance of predictive models and aligned incentive programs in achieving carbon neutrality while also increasing the area of healthy habitat in support of biodiversity. We were reminded that while many parts of the world have much to benefit from shifting from fossil fuel to renewable energy generation, grassroots advocacy and education are critical to creating a groundswell of public pressure that pushes policy and investment in that direction.  

The CBI team wrapped up COP16 feeling optimistic about the capacity of the attending organizations and parties to collaborate toward aligning and implementing innovative, large-scale, effective policies, incentives and programs to achieve meaningful progress toward the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and Paris Agreement targets.  We left with new relationships with partner organizations that complement CBI’s capabilities, and we look forward to showcasing future collaborative work that results from our collective investment of time and resources at COP16.

Advancing Private Land Conservation

The USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) financially and technically aids farmers and ranchers across the country in dedicating portions of their land holdings to support conservation over a period of time. We have been working closely with the USDA in developing online tools to improve the efficacy and effectiveness of the CRP in several pilot states: Washington, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado. Now open to the public, a beta version of the online application is ready for testing and review! 

For any location in one of our pilot States, simply drop a pin on the map and generate a list of plants that can be grown in that location. The generated list can be filtered based on various criteria such as (1) growth form, (2) soil characteristics, (3) plant tolerances, and (4) wildlife preference – to name a few. The results can then be transferred to a Vendor Match Module in one easy step, showing users where they can purchase the seeds and seedlings of the selected plant(s). Vendors can create private accounts where they can describe their business, provide and routinely update their plant species inventories, and more. CBI presented the tool at the recent conference of the American Seed Trade Association, one of the oldest trade organizations with over 650 members. Conference attendees who stopped by our exhibit provided valuable feedback and expressed excitement as the application gets rolled out for the entire country.

Our next steps are to make improvements to this application based on feedback from reviews, and expand coverage to include additional states in the months ahead, with the goal of covering the entire country. 

This spooky season we wanted to share some one-of-a-kind bat calls that one of our Ecologists, Dr. Chris Cosma, recorded between July and September of 2024 in Douglas County, Eastern Washington. Since the bat calls are ultrasonic (above the frequency of human hearing) the recordings are slowed down to about 1/10 speed. This lowers the frequency to be audible to humans. Check it out!

Bat calls in the video:

1. Townsend’s big-eared bat (Corynorhinus townsendi)
   A candidate species in Washington state, with two endangered subspecies elsewhere inthe US. This call was detected on August 30, in a site surrounded by predominantly restored CRP land. Towsend’s bat is a moth specialist – insect decline due to pesticide use and other stressors poses a major threat to the species.
2. The Spotted Bat (Euderma maculatum)
   Also a moth specialist, the only species in its genus, and has the largest ears of any bat species in North America. It is one of the few bat species that uses echolocation frequencies low enough to be audible to humans.
3. The big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus)
   A relatively large species, predominantly feeding on beetles and major agricultural pests. This bat is relatively resistant to white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has been decimating other bat species in the US. 
4. The little brown bat (Mytotis lucifugus)
   Once one of the most common bats across much of the US, but has experienced severe declines in recent decades, especially in the Northeastern U.S., due to white-nose syndrome. This deadly fungal disease has led to this species’ listing as endangered by the IUCN. Despite these declines, the species remains relatively common in parts of its range, including Washington state, where white-nose syndrome has not yet had as devastating an impact.

Translating Science to Action in Southern California’s Montane Forests

A new partnership between the US Forest Service, San Diego State University, and Conservation Biology Institute is applying newly emerging science to protect southern California’s montane conifer forests from the impacts of climate change and severe wildfires.

The effort expands on research from the Connecting Wildlands and Communities project that developed a landscape-scale framework to map refugia from multiple stressors, and ongoing research projects led by Drs. Alexandra Syphard and Erin Conlisk at CBI developing dynamic wildfire and vegetation succession models for forecasting the synergistic impacts of climate change, land use change, and different management scenarios. CBI’s Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (EEMS) will support collaborative development of interactive, locally relevant models for identifying priority locations for management actions.

COP 16 is Coming Up!

For the first time, CBI will be attending the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP16), scheduled from 21 October to 1 November 2024 in Cali, Colombia. Our delegation has been granted status to observe negotiations and will be leading three international panels during the meeting on the topics of wildfire, renewable energy planning, and habitat connectivity and transportation. In addition, we will be hosting our inaugural Wildfire Academy workshop while at COP16.

Our delegation consists of Robin Jones- Executive Director, Dr. Alexandra Syphard- Senior Global Change Research Scientist, and Karl Peet- Senior Advisor on Global Strategy. If you will be attending COP16, we would love to meet with you there. Drop us a note at info@consbio.org and we will be sure to make it happen.

We will be making regular posts to our social media accounts (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X) while we are at COP16, so be sure to follow us on your platform of choice to see our updates!

California Site Check Update

In order to streamline the construction of much-needed new housing in California, the Legislature created multiple California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) statutory exemptions for housing projects. Working closely with the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) in coordination with the Department of Housing and Community Development, CBI developed the Site Check online application for California to help speed up much-needed housing in the state while protecting sensitive lands and reducing greenhouse gas emissions via transportation. 

Site Check underwent an important update recently that is now available to all interested users at no charge. The easy-to-use tool was not designed to definitively determine whether or not a particular parcel is exempt from CEQA, but it is proving to be a convenient and powerful first step in determining how CEQA may apply to any potential housing development in the state reducing planning time and costs.

Outdoor Recreation is Not Benign

Public interest in outdoor recreation is high and growing worldwide with over 8 billion visits per year to the world’s terrestrial designated protected areas. In the U.S., 2023 showed the highest number of outdoor recreation participants on record (175.8 million), which was 55 percent of the nation’s population greater than age six.

In 2022, outdoor recreation in the U.S. generated $1.1 trillion in economic output and added $564 billion to the nation’s GDP, or 2.2% (Headwaters Economics 2023). This is larger than many other high-profile sectors such as oil and gas development, motor vehicle transportation, and the air transportation industry. Not only has outdoor recreation become a very big business, but it also provides many other important benefits. Outdoor recreation has become so important that it is a common driver in many government conservation strategies.

However, a growing body of evidence is showing another side of outdoor recreation where negative impacts are being witnessed to the very nature visitors wish to enjoy. Some have even postulated that we are “loving the land to death.” Ecological degradation has been reported in the form of soil and water pollution, vegetation destruction and alteration (including invasive species propagation), and behavior modification, stress, and death of numerous wildlife species. In a major review paper, species richness and abundance have been reported to be lower in association with higher levels of recreation across many species of vertebrates (Larson et al. 2019). In addition, numerous tribes in the western U.S. have expressed growing concern over the loss and degradation of their traditional rights that are increasingly becoming compromised by expanding outdoor recreation.

CBI will be working closely with tribes in Washington over the next year to help develop a map-based analytical approach for accessing environmental and social risks (particularly from the perspective of tribal rights on public lands) from current and planned outdoor recreation on state lands and to help forge a pathway that will result in adequate recreational opportunities while minimizing the associated negative impacts.

New Publications

The Importance of Geography in Forecasting Future Fire Patterns Under Climate Change

Syphard, A.D., S.J.E. Velazco, M.B. Rose, J. Franklin, and H.M. Regan

Models and maps anticipating how fire patterns may change in response to climate change and other drivers are important tools for climate-resilient protection of ecosystems and human communities. When using these models for decision-making, however, it is critical to understand their sources of uncertainty. We show that different geographical extents of model boundaries can result in nearly opposite future fire predictions for the same geographical areas—illustrating geographical variation in both fire regimes and their predictability. There is no one-size-fits-all prediction for fire futures in California or a single strategy to mitigate fire risk to people, infrastructure, and ecosystem resilience. Modeling and decision-making may be most reliable if constrained to the geographical limits of specific fire regimes.

Climate and Weather Drivers in Southern California Santa Ana Wind and non-Santa Wind Fires

Keeley, J.E., M. Flannigan, T.J. Brown, T. Rolinski, D. Cayan, A.D. Syphard, J. Guzman-Morales, and A. Gershunov

Autumn and winter Santa Ana Winds (SAW) are responsible for the largest and most destructive wildfires in southern California. This study analyzed available data to determine climate and weather factors responsible for the largest wildfires. The drivers of fire size differ between non-SAW and SAW fires. The best predictor of fire size for non-SAW fires was drought during the prior 5 years, followed by a current year vapor pressure deficit. For SAW fires, wind speed followed by drought was most important.

Conserving the Endangered Pacific Fisher in the Southern Sierra Nevada

In 2016, CBI published a comprehensive Conservation Assessment and Strategy for the Southern Sierra Nevada population of Pacific fisher with input from a wide array of fisher researchers and forest ecologists. At the time, this was considered by state and federal agencies to be the best available science to guide fisher conservation efforts. Unfortunately, the release of the Strategy coincided with a dramatic shift in landscape conditions across the Sierra Nevada and especially in the dense coniferous forests used by fishers. Historic drought from 2012 to 2015 was the most severe in over 1200 years, resulting in the deaths of at least 129 million conifer trees in the region, which in turn have fueled large, severe wildfires that have been burning across large swaths of habitat for fisher and other forest-dependent species. What was once a relatively connected chain of mixed-conifer forest along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada has become a series of isolated and degraded patches.

Fishers are strongly associated with older, dense forest having an abundance of large trees, logs, snags, and other forest debris. They den and raise kits almost exclusively in tree cavities, typically in large, live conifers and oaks. Fierce predators able to move freely through the forest canopy, fishers eat a wide variety of mammals, birds, and reptiles as well as berries and mushrooms. They present a conservation dilemma though; the dense, structurally complex forest conditions they prefer also provide abundant fuel for wildfires, which are increasing in scope and severity. The key to fisher conservation therefore lies in the thoughtful restoration of natural ecological processes, such as mixed-severity fire, which once created a dynamic mosaic of heterogenous forest conditions as fires thinned and sometimes destroyed fisher habitat in the short term, while sustaining the patchy mosaic of diverse forest conditions they needed in the long term.

In 2020, the Southern Sierra Nevada distinct population of fisher was listed as federally endangered, and last month, CBI finalized an agreement with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to update the 2016 Conservation Strategy. Led by Dr. Wayne Spencer, the updated Strategy will summarize all available science on SSN fisher ecology and population dynamics, and provide recommendations for the conservation of fisher and their habitat in this new landscape. It will be structured to align with the US Fish and Wildlife recovery planning process under the Endangered Species Act, while also serving as a model for a new form of conservation plan that recognizes the importance of habitat resilience and landscape dynamics.

For more information on fishers and CBI’s efforts over the years to support their conservation, check out CBI’s Southern Sierra Nevada Fisher Conservation webpage.

Reintroducing a Tiny Endangered Species to Its Former Range

The critically endangered Pacific pocket mouse (Perognathus longimembris pacificus), once thought extinct, is being reintroduced to native habitat areas on the southern California coast by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (Endangered Pacific pocket mice reintroduced at Camp Pendleton). CBI’s Chief Scientist Emeritus, Dr. Wayne Spencer, discovered one of the three remaining wild populations in 1995 and led recovery research on the species for a number of years (Spencer 2005). He currently serves on the team led by the Wildlife Alliance to identify sites where this tiniest subspecies of the little pocket mouse can be released back into the wild from a captive colony at the San Diego Safari Park (Chock et al. 2022). Most of the fine sandy habitats the Pacific pocket mouse requires, originally distributed from the current location of the Los Angeles Airport to the Mexican border, have been paved over or severely altered by human activities, leaving few opportunities to restore populations. CBI is proud to contribute to recovery of this critically endangered little rodent in a human-dominated ecosystem.

New Publication: “New research illuminates the ecological importance of gray wolves in the American West”

A recent publication in the journal Bioscience illustrates the importance of top predators in shaping natural ecosystems (in this case, gray wolves in the western U.S.). Led by William Ripple, a scientist at Oregon State University and CBI Associate, the research explores how the loss of gray wolves in the West impacts plant and animal communities and the overall function of the ecosystem. 

By the 1930s, gray wolves were removed from most of the Western U.S. and its national parks. Examining three national parks (Yellowstone, Olympic, and Wind Cave), the authors of this publication clearly demonstrate that the significant increase in ungulate populations correlates with the declines in deciduous trees that occurred following the removal of these animals.

The paper also calls attention to “shifting baselines” wherein increasingly degraded conditions are often viewed as reflecting the historical state of the system. The authors write, “Studying an altered ecosystem without recognizing how or why the system has changed over time because of the absence of a large predator could have serious implications for wildlife management, biodiversity conservation, and ecosystem restoration, like diagnosing a sick patient without a baseline health exam.”

It is clear that the loss of top predators has major consequences for the health of natural ecosystems; however, as the authors remind us, there are likely other factors such as fire suppression, invasive species, and overgrazing that we need to examine closely. By acknowledging the historical presence of large predators, other anthropogenic legacies, and their potential ecosystem effects, researchers can contribute to more effective conservation and management strategies in national parks and beyond.

New Publication: “Sustainable nature-based solutions require establishment and maintenance of keystone plant-pollinator interactions”

CBI’s ecologist, Chris Cosma, co-authored a recent publication that focuses on ecosystem regulators on the opposite end of the animal food chain – insects. 

As global climate change continues to threaten biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services, nature-based solutions (NBS) seek to integrate societal and ecological aspects of environmental problems, thereby benefiting humans while minimizing ecosystem degradation. Despite the recognition that ecosystem services rely on biodiversity conservation, NBS generally has not given sufficient attention to the biodiversity component, especially as it pertains to insects. Although NBS encompasses ecosystems of all types, at their core, many NBS depend upon plants that, in turn, depend upon pollinators. 

Unfortunately, populations of many insect pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and moths have plummeted in recent decades. These declines highlight the interconnected nature of plant and pollinator conservation. The reproduction of almost 90% of angiosperms and 70% of the main human food crops are tied to the animals that pollinate them. Thus, the global change-driven loss of pollinators represents both the loss of biodiversity and the loss of a critical ecosystem service. The sustained success of NBS therefore depends upon preserving resilient pollinator communities, which can be accomplished by prioritizing keystone species and interactions that maintain function under future climates.

New Publication: “Evidence of increasing wildfire damage with decreasing property price in Southern California fires”

Alexandra Syphard and Erin Conlisk of CBI’s Conservation Planning & Management Team helped examine the disproportionate socio-economic impact of wildfires in Southern California.  Using the Zillow Transaction and Assessment Database (ZTRAX), spatial analysis of wildfire severity, home destruction, and property value was examined within fire perimeters occurring from 2000–2019. 

The authors found evidence to support the hypothesis that lower-priced properties were more likely to be damaged, however, the likelihood of damage and the influence of property value significantly varied across individual fire perimeters. When considering individual fires, properties within two 2003 fires (Cedar and Grand Prix – Old Fires) showed statistically significant decreasing burn damage with increasing property value. Occurring in 2007 and later, three fires (Witch-Poomacha, Thomas, and Woolsey) showed no significant relationship between price and damage. 

Further exploration into this topic is needed. In the meantime, decision-makers should consider allocating wildfire risk mitigation resources such as fire-fighting and wildfire structural preparedness resources to more socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhoods in Southern California.

The Wildfire Academy

In the past several years, CBI has developed a reputation for expertise in the applied science of wildfire prevention, management, and recovery. Our team of experts is constantly in demand, and we have come to recognize that our team’s knowledge and approach have the opportunity to scale its impact through education.  As such, CBI has embarked upon the creation of The Wildfire Academy, an educational program that addresses the impact of wildfire grounded in the best available science and accessible to all. The program is being designed to educate landowners, students, policymakers, and other decision-makers on this important topic as we continue to live in a rapidly changing world.

We are actively seeking sponsors for the program, if interested, or for any other inquiries, please email us at marketing@consbio.org.

Placer County Conservation Planning Support

Placer County, California continues to be one of the fastest-growing counties in the state. Beginning in 1994, the county General Plan aimed to accommodate this growth while conserving productive agricultural lands and protecting many of its natural communities and rare species. After numerous assessments and stakeholder engagements, a draft Placer County Conservation Plan (PCCP) was released in 2011.

For the western foothills portion of the county, the PCCP focuses on protecting or restoring various oak woodland communities as well as habitat for identified aquatic and terrestrial covered species including, valley elderberry longhorn beetle, Central Valley Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, California red-legged frog, northwestern pond turtle, California black rail, and Swainson’s hawk. Implementing the plan is underway and involves integrating high-value lands made available by willing sellers. The biggest challenge is finding suitable habitat to mitigate the projected impacts of new growth in a way that maintains landscape ecological integrity.

CBI was asked by the Foothills Conservation Strategy Ad Hoc Committee to integrate the available spatial data pertaining to the natural community and species targets listed in the plan and create a flexible spatially explicit model to assist county staff in identifying and systematically evaluating potential lands for protection or restoration to meet plan goals. The model housed in Data Basin contains some private data; therefore, it is available only to county staff. 

Map of the PCCP focal areas for the valley and foothills subareas. The parcel-based model created and housed in Data Basin is for the foothills region.

“CBI has made a significant contribution to the Plan implementation through the development of an on-l ine tool in Data Basin that supports the development and implementation of conservation strategies for the Sierra Nevada Foothills. Placer County staff and the PCA advisory committee are using this tool for preliminary identification of critical parcels that will be followed up with parcel-level field analysis.”

Dennis Grossman, Foothill Representative, Placer County Conservation Program Advisory Committee

New CBI Team Members!

Jorge Diaz (far left) started his career in technology as an artist, animator, and designer working on both the mainstream and the educational video game industry. After completing an MS in Computer Science he started as a software engineer in the public sector. Sometime in between he taught college classes in storyboarding as well as computer science and co-owned two art supply stores with his wife. His developer experience is in accessibility, automation, full stack development, security, user interface design, and developing systems for a wide variety of user types.

Libbey White (center left) grew up enjoying the natural splendor of Montana, which instilled in her an instinctive interest in conservation. Libbey majored in biology, but was a laundromat attendant, book store clerk, ranch cook, and lab assistant, among other things, before getting close to working with data and code. She got her start in the software field thanks to willing tutors at the Center for Computational Biology at Montana State University. Since then she has held a variety of software development roles, including exhibit software developer at Oregon Museum of Science & Industry and research software developer at Knight Cancer Institute, where she created a genomic data visualization application. 

Kerrie Ishkarin (center right) has a Bachelor of Fine Art and a Certificate in UX Design from Rhode Island School of Design and joined the CBI Software & Tool Team, bringing 8+ years of experience working as a user interface (UI), user experience (UX), and product designer. She has worked on desktop and mobile product designs using tools such as Figma, Sketch, and InVision to create sketches, wireframes, prototypes, and implementation-ready designs.

Karl Peet (far right) is a researcher and advocate working at the intersection of climate change, energy transition, and conservation. He is helping to shape CBI’s global engagement strategy on nature-positive infrastructure and renewable energy.  Karl is also assessing strategies to meet 2030 targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework and other multilateral environmental agreements, reflecting the technical knowledge and cultural imperatives of Indigenous communities.

Data Basin Now Supports ArcGIS Pro Data Formats!

Data Basin now supports the latest Esri software file formats generated by ArcGIS Pro.

Roads Drive Tropical Forest Biodiversity Loss

There are around 40 million miles of roads in the world with another 15.5 million miles projected to be added by 2050, which is the fastest expansion rate of road building in history. Roads continue to be constructed around the world including the U.S., which leads the world in the number of linear miles (>7 million miles), but the most recent concentration of new road building is in the tropical nations. Even more troubling is that many roads are being constructed informally or illegally and, therefore, do not appear on any map. These are sometimes referred to as “ghost roads”.

In a recent article in Nature, the authors conducted a study on roads in the Asia-Pacific region and found 3.0 to 6.6 times more roads exist than are shown in any leading roads dataset. These ghost roads are being built to gain access to pristine tropical forest areas for various purposes: agriculture expansion, logging, mining, poaching, and land speculators – all with serious ecological consequences. Roads were shown to be the strongest correlate to deforestation out of 38 potential variables. The authors conclude that “ghost roads are among the gravest of all direct threats to tropical forests.”

Unfortunately, the Asia-Pacific Region is not alone. The same issue has been recorded in many other parts of the world (e.g., the Amazon region and Congo Basin).

Of course, roads are a vital infrastructure for modern societies, so where should they go? An article by Distinguished Research Professor Bill Laurance, published in The Conversation, describes a global strategy for road building. Bill and his coauthors intersected areas of relative environmental value with areas of relative agricultural potential identifying priority areas for both and where in the world these two uses are in conflict.

Improving road networks in areas of high agricultural potential and low environmental value are good candidates as they have immediate value to local people. In the high environmental value areas, especially in direct conflict with potential new agricultural land, it would be wise to avoid the first cut into these areas as once there is an initial access road constructed many more roads rapidly follow with serious consequences to the local biodiversity. For example, in the Congo region of Africa, 60 percent of the forest elephant population has been lost over the last decade and the critically endangered eastern lowland gorilla (Grauer’s Gorilla) population is estimated to be 6,800 individuals. 

New Publication: Chile’s Valparaíso hills on fire

Our Senior Research Scientist, Alexandra Syphard, is a co-author of the paper in Science, Chile’s Valparaíso hills on fire, which highlights human-caused ignitions, flammable plantations, and prolonged droughts making Chile one of the most fire-prone places in the world. A record-breaking Chile wildfire in February destroyed thousands of homes, caused 133 human fatalities, and burned thousands of hectares of stressed vegetation. Wildfire mitigation in Chile will require many steps, including (1) governance and land-use planning, (2) restoring and managing native forest vegetation, (3) removing highly flammable forest plantations, (4) prohibiting the conversion of recently burned native forests into exotic forest plantations or new urban developments, and (5) strengthening fire prevention programs in Chile helping reduce human-caused ignitions.