The Klamath Siskiyou Oak Network (KSON) is holding its second quarterly meeting of 2022 on Thursday, April 28th from 9-10:30 am. This collaborative regional partnership works to conserve oak habitats on private and public lands in southern Oregon and northern California. Our speaker this month is Jena Volpe, a KSON steering committee member and Fire Ecologist with the Medford BLM. She will be discussing the Integrated Vegetation Management for Resilient Lands Environmental Assessment (IVM-RL EA), which creates a toolbox for the BLM to increase the scope, scale, and pace of proactive treatments over a 10 year period. Please email mlm@klamathbird.org for the Zoom link.
The Great Basin Bird Conservation Region (BCR 9) is shown in light gray in this map of the United States’ western BCRs.
In 2019, KBO partnered with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to initiate a new long-term bird monitoring project in eastern Oregon as part of the Integrated Monitoring for Bird Conservation Regions (IMBCR) program that is coordinated by Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. This eastern Oregon bird monitoring project is an expansion of the IMBCR long-term monitoring program that is being implemented to better understand long-term bird population trends in North America’s Bird Conservation Regions, or BCRs. Our fieldwork brought us far from our home in Ashland, Oregon to monitor birds in the sagebrush habitats of eastern Oregon, stretching KBO’s point count program out all the way to the Idaho border!
One important benefit of KBO reaching out into eastern Oregon is that we helped to complete IMBCR’s coverage of the Great Basin BCR (BCR 9) and the sagebrush habitats of the west. Big Sagebrush is an important plant species for Greater Sage Grouse and this high desert shrub makes up an important component of the at-risk sagebrush ecosystems that other species of concern depend on, including Brewer’s Sparrow, Sage Thrasher, Sagebrush Sparrow, and Short-eared Owl.
Brewer’s Sparrow
The IMBCR program started in 2008 and now covers nine BCRs in 16 states across the western United States. The goal of the program is to use a consistent, statistically rigorous design and protocol to provide complete and current information about bird distributions, abundances, and population trends over time. In addition to meeting BLM’s long-term goals, this new project strives to meet other BLM district-level information needs in Oregon. For example, IMBCR data can be used to understand ecological conditions, identify research needs, and provide valuable information for management and conservation planning.
Klamath Bird Observatory will collaborate with Bird Conservancy of the Rockies on broad scale analyses of individual species occupancy and density and results will be incorporated into reports, peer-reviewed publications, and decision support tools. The IMBCR dataset will be available to address both short-term management questions and long-term monitoring needs specific to BLM districts in eastern Oregon for years to come.
On June 27, 2015 the Klamath Siskiyou Oak Network (KSON) will host an Oak Woodland Restoration Field Day, designed to provide an opportunity for landowners and land managers to learn about oak restoration on their lands. This half-day event will be held at several properties in the Colestin Valley between Ashland and Yreka, where a large-scale private lands oak conservation partnership program has been underway for the past decade. A series of presentations by restoration professionals, agency managers, wildlife biologists, and private landowners will highlight current oak restoration and management approaches, the habitat value of oaks for birds and other native wildlife, and how landowners can access technical resources and funding for restoration.
The KSON partnership conserves oak habitats on private and public lands in the Klamath-Siskiyou Bioregion of southern Oregon and northern California. KSON partners include non-governmental organizations, local state and federal agencies, Native American tribes, and private citizens. The Oak Woodland Restoration Field Day represents an important part of KSON’S goal to promote oak conservation and restoration by providing opportunities for practitioners and community members to engage on issues affecting threatened oak habitats. KSON members from Lomakatsi Restoration Project, Klamath Bird Observatory, Bureau of Land Management, Natural Resource Conservation Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service will be present to offer their unique perspectives on oak restoration. This event will be an excellent opportunity for landowners and managers to meet others who share an interest in habitat conservation and restoration of oak savannas and woodlands, and to discuss the best ways to preserve these precious natural resources into the future.
The Field Day is free, but space is limited and registration is required. This event is planned for 8:30 am to 2:30 pm, and participants will need to provide their own lunch. For more information, including registration and carpool information from Ashland or Yreka, or for more information about KSON, please contact KSON Coordinator Kate Halstead at 541-201-0866 ext 7#, or at keh@klamathbird.org.
INFORMATION CONTACT:
Kate Halstead, Biologist & KSON Coordinator
Klamath Bird Observatory
keh@klamathbird.org
541-201-0866, ext 7#
The Klamath Siskiyou Oak Network (KSON) is holding its second quarterly meeting of 2022 on Thursday, April 28th from 9-10:30 am. This collaborative regional partnership works to conserve oak habitats on private and public lands in southern Oregon and northern California. Our speaker this month is Jena Volpe, a KSON steering committee member and Fire Ecologist with the Medford BLM. She will be discussing the Integrated Vegetation Management for Resilient Lands Environmental Assessment (IVM-RL EA), which creates a toolbox for the BLM to increase the scope, scale, and pace of proactive treatments over a 10 year period. Please email mlm@klamathbird.org for the Zoom link.
