1 / 22

Oregon Wildlife Habitat Connectivity: A National Perspective

Oregon Wildlife Habitat Connectivity: A National Perspective. Sandra Jacobson USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station Redwood Sciences Lab Arcata CA. Oregon Wildlife Habitat Connectivity: A National Perspective. Sandra Jacobson USDA Forest Service

brandi
Download Presentation

Oregon Wildlife Habitat Connectivity: A National Perspective

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Oregon Wildlife Habitat Connectivity: A National Perspective Sandra Jacobson USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station Redwood Sciences Lab Arcata CA

  2. Oregon Wildlife Habitat Connectivity: A National Perspective Sandra Jacobson USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station Redwood Sciences Lab Bend, Oregon

  3. This agent is unique • It kills outright • It removes habitat and replaces it with expanses of barren surfaces • It slices habitat by creating a barrier to movement • It’s noisy and carries frequently noisy people into remote habitat • It creates noxious fumes and salts

  4. The Challenges • Public roads in the US number 4 million miles, excluding FS administrative roads • The Interstate Highway system celebrated its 50th anniversary in June 2006 • The first speed limit was in 1924….at 35 mph • Stoner published the first article about the effects of roads on wildlife in 1936 • Vehicle miles have increased to 3,000,000,000,000 in 2004

  5. Habitat connectivity threats • Loss of habitat/fragmentation • Pollution • Direct mortality • Human disturbance • Noise • Invasive species • Unnatural or novel ecological processes

  6. What do all these things have in common? ROADS

  7. Transportation is the Common Link • Follows or precedes development • Development on private lands precedes increase in highway development on public lands • Usually roads are irreversible and irretrievable • Volume of traffic predicts impacts to wildlife Photo USDA Forest Service: Dave Herr

  8. McArthur Lake Wildlife Corridor Highway Powerline Another railroad Dam Railroad

  9. Safety! • Roads on or near public lands are typically rural • 24-35% of all crashes on rural roads are related to animal collisions • Rate of crashes on rural roads is much higher than on high volume roads

  10. How can we integrate our disparate agency missions and opportunities? • Statewide habitat connectivity plans have grass roots origin • State Wildlife Action Plans provide a common base • Now, SAFETEA-LU provides additional framework through Section 6001 • Identification of mitigation opportunities • All together: a historic opportunity to integrate transportation and ecological planning

  11. Statewide Habitat Connectivity/Transportation Planning • No agency has statewide habitat connectivity as part of its mission • Simple in concept: gather key people well-distributed among organizations, give them basic common understanding, allow them to agree on a plan

  12. Major Benefits of Statewide Connectivity Planning • Agencies identify and agree on priorities • Greater overall knowledge allows agencies to be ‘on the same page’ • Allows overlapping mission accomplishment • Increases predictability, therefore reduces suspicion • Urgent situations can be identified and input into planning process • Partially fulfills requirement to identify mitigation opportunities

  13. Florida • Efficient Transportation Decision Making (ETDM) • Meets intent of SAFETEA-LU Section 6001 (“play and plan well together”) • Several years in the making • Several million dollars • Used now for all kinds of planning Pellicer Creek Land Bridge over I-95 (35,000 Average Annual Daily Traffic)

  14. California • One of earliest statewide connectivity efforts, mostly led by NGO’s • Not limited to roads • California is big, diverse AND has very powerful counties • Most effective in Southern California Sierra County Highway 89 Stewardship Team

  15. New Mexico • One of the simplest and fastest statewide plans • Identified and prioritized linkages in two days • Limited to larger species • Highly praised by participants because of interagency collaboration

  16. Colorado • NGO led: Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project • FHWA 2006 Exemplary Ecosystem Award • Complex approach included modeling and expert opinion

  17. Nice combination of complexity and speed Interagency workshop for most people was one day but lots of additional intensive work Software now available Arizona Tonto National Forest

  18. Other states • Utah • Vermont • Idaho • Montana Idaho Panhandle National Forests

  19. Oregon! • One of the first states to use its State Wildlife Action Plan • Using the methods shown to work well in several states • You are making history! Photo: USFS Don Virgovic

  20. Transportation planning is the best hope for an “Ecological Infrastructure” • Analogous to the “Built Infrastructure” and understood by the DOT’s • Transportation planning is continuous across all jurisdictions • Highly standardized across the country • Now required by law to coordinate with land management agencies • Mitigation of environmental impacts is growing in acceptance • The closest thing we have to a national strategy for connectivity planning is the State Action Plans combined with SAFETEA-LU’s Section 6001

More Related