Oak Habitat Conservation Projects

KBO is involved in oak habitat conservation projects throughout the Pacific Northwest. Oaks in the PNW are facing many threats, including invasive species, conifer encroachment, the lack of fire on the landscape, and human impact. These oak woodlands provide crucial habitats for many of our most at-risk western forest birds, including species like Lewis’s Woodpecker.

Visit Avian Knowledge Northwest to explore oak habitat-focused tools for land managers. 

Upper Rogue Oak Initiative

Upper Rogue Oak Initiative (UROI) will restore over 3,000 acres of oak habitat within three watersheds east and northeast of White City and Medford, Oregon. Work will occur throughout the Little Butte Watershed and may extend north to the Big Butte Watershed. Restoration will remove conifers that are crowding oaks, use prescribed fire where feasible, reduce noxious weeds, and reestablish a native understory. Click here to learn more about the UROI project. 

Central Umpqua Mid-Klamath Oak Habitat Conservation Project

KBO collaborated with a diverse group of partners through the Central Umpqua Mid-Klamath Oak Habitat Conservation Project, a Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) funded Cooperative Conservation Partnership Initiative, to better understand bird-habitat relationships and the response of birds to restoration in oak woodlands.

They worked with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Lomakatsi Restoration Project to implement and monitor oak restoration on private lands in Douglas and Jackson Counties in Oregon, as well as Siskiyou County, California. Around 2,000 acres were restored, and pre-restoration monitoring was completed in 2012. The US Department of the Interior honored this collaborative project with the Partners in Conservation Award.

Quercus and Aves

KBO contributed to a new publication on birds and oaks as part of our role in the American Bird Conservancy’s Quercus and Aves project. Click on the highlighted text to access the well-received Land Manager’s Guide to Bird Habitat and Populations in Oak Ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest and its Appendix of Oak Bird Species Accounts. We also coordinated a private landowner field day during which landowners spent the morning outside with restoration practitioners, agency managers, and wildlife biologists, discussing oak restoration in the Rogue Basin, opportunities for private land restoration, and the benefits of restoration to birds and other wildlife.  KBO worked with Oregon State University in support of Kate Halstead, a Master’s student who used the data collected from this project for her thesis.