Integrating functional connectivity and fire management for better conservation outcomes

Abstract

Globally, the mean abundance of terrestrial animals has fallen by 50% since 1970, and populations face ongoing threats associated with habitat loss, fragmentation, climate change, and disturbance. Climate change can influence the quality of remaining habitat directly and indirectly by precipitating increases in the extent, frequency, and severity of natural disturbances, such as fire. Species face the combined threats of habitat clearance, changing climates, and altered disturbance regimes, each of which may interact and have cascading impacts on animal populations. Typically, conservation agencies are limited in their capacity to mitigate rates of habitat clearance, habitat fragmentation, or climate change, yet fire management is increasingly used worldwide to reduce wildfire risk and achieve conservation outcomes. A popular approach to ecological fire management involves the creation of fire mosaics to promote animal diversity. However, this strategy has 2 fundamental limitations: the effect of fire on animal movement within or among habitat patches is not considered and the implications of the current fire regime for long-term population persistence are overlooked. Spatial and temporal patterns in fire history can influence animal movement, which is essential to the survival of individual animals, maintenance of genetic diversity, and persistence of populations, species, and ecosystems. We argue that there is rich potential for fire managers to manipulate animal movement patterns; enhance functional connectivity, gene flow, and genetic diversity; and increase the capacity of populations to persist under shifting environmental conditions. Recent methodological advances, such as spatiotemporal connectivity modeling, spatially explicit individual-based simulation, and fireregime modeling can be integrated to achieve better outcomes for biodiversity in human-modified, fire-prone landscapes.

Untangling the influences of fire, habitat and introduced predators on the endangered heath mouse

“…There is great potential to use fire for animal conservation (Kelly & Brotons, 2017; Sitters & Di Stefano, 2020). However, most fire‐based conservation strategies aim to manipulate spatial and temporal aspects of the fire regime without explicitly incorporating important links between fire, resource availability and the focal species (Watson et al ., 2012; Di Stefano et al ., 2013; Kelly et al ., 2017).…”

“…In turn, increased fire frequency and extent reduce the availability of ground‐level vegetation, depleting food resources, and increasing the risk of post‐fire predation, population decline and extinction for many species (Doherty et al ., 2015; Ward et al ., 2020). Nevertheless, fire is essential for species persistence in many ecosystems, providing an opportunity for fire‐based conservation management (Kelly & Brotons, 2017; Sitters & Di Stefano, 2020).…”

Fire mosaics in south-west Australian forest landscapes

“…McGarigal and Marks (1995) recognise two broad metric categories for describing patch mosaics: metrics that describe the composition of the patches (measures of abundance, richness, evenness (of size) and diversity) and those that describe their spatial configuration (size, perimeter, shape and connectedness). Spatial arrangement of patches (patch size, shape or perimeter-to-area ratio, patch connectedness, patch density and edge/perimeter density) has been shown to be useful for studying and understanding species conservation and ecological processes (Flather and Bevis 2002;Cushman et al 2008;Wang et al 2014;Inkoom et al 2018;Sitters and Di Stefano 2020).…”

Factors influencing persistence of a threatened amphibian in restored wetlands despite severe population decline during climate change driven weather extremes

“…While habitat may provide a refuge from weather anomalies, surrounding habitat connectivity is necessary for the persistence of animal populations after these events (Opdam andWascher 2004, Sitters andDi Stefano 2020). We observed rapid colonisation of surrounding wetlands through juvenile dispersal, highlighting the importance of habitat connectivity in recovering populations after severe climatic events.…”