Abstract

This paper offers a scientific framework of principles and practices that are provided to guide development of federal policy concerning wildfire and salvage logging and other post-fire treatments. A common thread throughout the recommendations is that most native species are adapted to natural patterns and processes of disturbance and recovery in the landscape and that preventing additional human disturbance (and reducing the effects of past disturbance) generally will provide the best pathway to regional ecological recovery. We assume that maintenance of viable populations of native species across their native ranges and the protection of critical ecosystem functions and services are desired objectives of federal land management, as stated in relevant legislation.

Land management practices in the interior Columbia and upper Missouri basins have profoundly impacted forest, grassland, and aquatic ecosystems. Watersheds and forests have been degraded (e.g., ecosystems fragmented, habitats simplified or lost, disturbance regimes altered). At every level of biological organization -- within populations, within assemblages, within species, and across the landscape -- the integrity of biological systems has been severely degraded. This is best seen in the marked reduction in the biological diversity in the region.

The entire range of land management practices is implicated in this regionwide decline. Streamside development, logging, grazing, mining, fire suppression, removal of beaver and large predators, water withdrawals, introduction of exotic species, and chronic effects of roadbuilding have cumulatively altered landscapes to the point where local extirpation of sensitive species is widespread and likely to continue. Areas dominated by healthy populations of native species of vertebrates are exceptional. Many of these changes began long before the establishment of wilderness areas and other protections, and therefore, the majority of the region has been impacted.

Western ecosystems have evolved with, and in response to, fire. While some have argued that fire is the major imminent "threat" to the health of the region's forest ecosystems, it must be recognized that there are a number of threats to the integrity of ecosystems in the interior west.

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