WILDLIFE AND NATIVE FISH - ISSUES OF FOREST HEALTH AND CONSERVATION OF SENSITIVE SPECIES

Issues related to forest health and the threat of larger, more destruc tive wildfires have led to major new initiatives to restructure and re compose forest communities in the western United States. Proposed solu tions 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 disturb ances such as fire indicate that complexity and spatial diversity of h abitats are important to the resilience and persistence of populations . Some populations retain the ecological diversity necessary to persis t in the face of large fires, and natural events such as wildfire have been important in creating and maintaining habitat diversity. Althoug h timber harvest and fire can precipitate similar changes in watershed processes, we do not necessarily expect the physical and ecological c onsequences of large fires and timber harvest to be the same. We agree that healthy forests are fundamental to healthy aquatic ecosystems. I n their haste to restore unhealthy forests, however, managers must tak e care to avoid simplistic solutions that compound problems already pr esent in the management of aquatic ecosystems and native fishes. Manag ement to restore ecological structure, composition, and process is lar gely experimental and potentially risky. We propose that the mosaic of conditions in both terrestrial and aquatic systems provides an opport unity to learn and adapt new management without placing key remnant aq uatic habitats and populations at risk.