Notes from the Public Land Break-Out Group

Notes taken by Kim Davitt
kdavitt@wildands.org

Goal: Capture collective thinking about issues and ideas surrounding wildlife linkage conservation on private lands.

Forest Service planning: The Forest Service members of this group took the lead in explaining how some of their programs address wildlife linkage, such as the Kootenai National Forest Revised Forest Plan, which identifies linkage areas and tiers to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee’s Public Lands Task Force Public Land document for approach areas.

Interagency efforts: The need for an interagency effort was raised and echoed by many participants. An example was given of the need for interagency coordination in the High Divide area by US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Dept. of Natural Resources and Conservation. There was a discussion about what scale this type of coordination was needed: multi-state, multi-jurisdictional, multi-regions, species-specific (such as the pronghorn migration route or wolverine in the High Divide).

Reinvigoration of IGBC task forces: The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee has much of that interagency coordination built into it and the three task forces: public lands, private lands, and highways had some early momentum. The public lands task force came up with the approach area recommendations. The private lands task force continues to sponsor Rich Clough’s linkage identification work with private landowners. Getting these task forces to become more active may be the easiest way to address coordinated, interagency linkage efforts.

Wildland urban interface areas: These areas are often linkage areas and their management direction could incorporate wildlife linkage issues.

Motorized recreation: There are over 4,000 miles of snowmobile trails groomed by Montana, Fish, Wildlife and Parks. These could have an impact on wide-ranging carnivores and their movements. The State’s role should be evaluated in this grooming process.

Project decisions: There was discussion about how to incorporate linkage and American Wildlands’ information into public lands projects. The information needs to be given out to the agencies before projects, it needs to be given to them during scoping, and the cumulative effects to linkage need to be addressed. For example, a project may just look at cumulative effects in a Lynx Analysis Unit (LAU) rather than at a scale that can incorporate connectivity. Connectivity must be accounted for in the analysis and we need to figure out how best to do this. It was also mentioned that linkage information carries more weight if it has names and institutions behind it. The role of the agency scientists should be the lead with the PLA information.

Wildlife populations: We discussed habitat connectivity vs. population connectivity and how hunting and trapping can be connectivity issues for wolverine, wolves and grizzly bears.