Wildlife and Plants

Climate Change is making our environment unpredictable. Increased persistence of drought is causing deaths of plants and animals across our landscapes. However, drought amongst the western United States is not a new thing. Native American populations have been living with drought since time immemorial and practiced culturally prescribed fire practices to foster the landscape for an...

Climate change has the potential to magnify existing problems in conservation, such as invasive species and disease. This threat is particularly severe in the Klamath Basin, where the fish parasite Ceratonova shastais making national headlines for killing salmon, and invasive trout have extirpated populations of native trout. The Klamath Basin is slated for one of the largest restoration...

Lake sturgeon are a fish of strong subsistence, cultural, and spiritual importance for many Tribal nations. But lake sturgeon are especially vulnerable to climate change given their unique life history and historical mass declines. Therefore, there is a great need to incorporate Tribal perspectives on lake sturgeon shifts and information needs into adaptation planning to conserve these...

The populations of many forest birds have declined in recent decades due to loss of habitat area and degradation of habitat quality. Past land management has left the landscape of the heavily forested Appalachian Mountains with too little old growth as well as too few young, regenerating forests. This change in habitat structure has led to the listing of several forest birds as Species...

As wildfire activity surges in the western U.S., managers are increasingly challenged by decisions surrounding managing post-fire environments. Changing fire regimes and warmer, drier post-fire conditions are increasing the likelihood of post-fire vegetation transitions, for example, from forest to grassland. Given the economic and ecological importance of these ecosystems...

CASC experts are often requested to provide technical assistance to other Federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of State, as well as national and international partners. The U.S. Consulate in Thailand solicited leadership and guidance from the CASCs to help develop community-supported recommendations for increasing resiliency for fishing communities in the Mekong River Basin...

Throughout the Pacific Northwest, invasive flora threaten river ecosystems and the communities that depend on them. Invasive plants harm water quality, occupy habitat for native species, reduce recreation opportunities, and damage infrastructure such as pumps and dams. Resource managers from federal, state, and local agencies, as well as local non-profits, spend hundreds of thousands of...

Climate change is reshaping the abundance and distribution of sport fishes across the U.S., creating novel challenges for socially and economically important recreational fisheries. Existing fish and recreational fisheries data sets are invaluable given their broad geographic footprint and long-term data, but integration across datasets to inform management has been limited, leading to...

Habitat loss is splitting the world’s plant and animal populations into smaller, more isolated fragments. At the same time, many organisms must also withstand rapid and stressful changes to their environment. Combined, these factors can increase extinction risk. A possible escape from extinction is through adaptation. Yet, small populations with low genetic diversity may be unable to...

Many amphibian species are highly susceptible to changes in precipitation timing and volume because of their reliance on intermittently flooded surface water pools, which are primarily filled through snowmelt and precipitation runoff. ​With increasing evapotranspiration (i.e. transfer of water from land to the atmosphere) due to climate change, the timing and availability of water in key...

Native mussels are in precipitous decline across North America. As part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation’s (CTUIR) First Foods management framework that places significant value on the cultural importance of traditional food resources, they have been identified as a top conservation priority in the Pacific Northwest. Freshwater mussels are a vital component...

The warming climate combined with a century of fuel build up (i.e. burnable plant materials found in the forest) due to fire suppression are driving megafires that threaten life and property and are severely altering ecosystems. Many of these fires are converting large areas of forest to shrub fields or grasslands, termed “ecological transformations.” Although uncharacteristically severe...