Wildfire and Native Fish: Issues of Forest Health and Conservation of Sensitive Species

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Abstract
Issues related to forest health and the threat of larger, more destructive wildfires have led to major new initiatives to restructure and recompose forest communities in the western United States. Proposed solutions will depend, in part, on silvicultural treatments and prescribed burning. Large fires can produce dramatic changes in aquatic systems, including altered sediment and flow regimes, fish mortality, and even local extinctions. Responses of salmonid populations to large disturbances such as fire indicate that complexity and spatial diversity of habitats are important to the resilience and persistence of populations. Some populations retain the ecological diversity necessary to persist in the face of large fires, and natural events such as wildfire have been important in creating and maintaining habitat diversity. Although timber harvest and fire can precipitate similar changes in watershed processes, we do not necessarily expect the physical and ecological consequences of large fires and ...

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