Synthesis of Knowledge on the Effects of Fire and Fire Surrogates on Wildlife in U.S. Dry Forests

Dry forests throughout the United States are fire-dependent ecosystems, and much attention has been given to restoring their ecological function. As such, land managers often are tasked with reintroducing fire via prescribed fire, wildland fire use, and fire-surrogate treatments such as thinning and mastication. During planning, managers frequently are expected to anticipate effects of management actions on wildlife species. This document represents a synthesis of existing knowledge on wildlife responses to fire and fire-surrogate treatments, presented in a useful, management-relevant format. Based on scoping meetings and dialogue with public lands managers from throughout the United States, we provide detailed, species-level, summary tables for project biologists and fire managers trying to anticipate the effects of fire and fire-surrogate treatments on local wildlife species. We performed an extensive survey of the published, peer-reviewed scientific literature on wildlife response to fire and fire-surrogate treatments. In total, we reviewed more than 150 articles, included 90 articles in our database, resulting in 4,937 records of 313 vertebrate species.