Several listed species under the federal Endangered Species Act rely on various oak woodland types in Texas as habitat for at least some portion of their life cycle. Many of these oak woodland habitats are now outside their natural fire regimes due to long-term fire suppression. This has led to various changes in vegetative structure, including conversion from open woodland types to those containing a dense woody understory. This shift in vegetative structure has been implicated as a factor in the long-term decline for many of the endangered and threatened species that rely on these oak woodlands. The US Fish & Wildlife Service, along with state, non-profit and private landowner partners, have adapted their fire management techniques, on both public and private lands, to restore and enhance Texas oak woodlands for the benefit of multiple endangered species including Black-capped vireo (Vireo atricapilla), Golden-cheeked warbler (Setophaga chrysoparia), Houston toad (Bufo houstonensis) and Whooping Crane (Grus americana). For example, the US Fish & Wildlife Service Partner's for Fish and Wildlife program has been engaging private landowners in the post oak savannah ecoregion of east-central Texas in applying prescribed fire as a tool to reduce woody understory vegetation such as yaupon (Ilex vomitoria) and increase herbaceous understory vegetation to improve historic Houston toad habitat. Several of these landscape scale, endangered species fire management efforts will be described and both the ecological and social aspects of will be discussed.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.