Impacts of Wildfire and Grazing on Bird Communities
The Redbud Audubon Society is pleased to host Dr. Frank Fogarty, who will discuss how wildfires and cattle grazing influence wintering bird communities in California’s oak woodlands. The monthly program meeting will be on Zoom on Thursday, Nov. 21. The Zoom program starts at 7 p.m. and registration can be achieved by clicking on the link in this newsletter or by going to www.redbudaudubon.org and clicking on the registration link. The Zoom link for the program will be sent the day of the program.
Dr. Fogarty is an Assistant Professor of Applied Avian Ecology in the Wildlife Department at Cal Poly Humboldt (formerly Humboldt State University). He studies how potential disturbances, including wildfire, climate change, habitat fragmentation, timber harvest, and cattle grazing, interact with birds and their communities. He is also interested in methodologies for evaluating occupancy and abundance, especially as it relates to the kinds of messy, realistic data that are used by wildlife professionals.
Wildfire and cattle grazing are both potential disturbances that may dramatically alter wildlife habitat, Forarty explains. However, little is known about how these disturbances affect birds on their wintering grounds. Dr. Fogarty will discuss his work investigating the responses of wintering bird communities to these disturbances in a northern California oak woodland. This work was conducted at Audubon California’s Bobcat Ranch, near Winters, which provided a mosaic of burned and unburned sites, as well as grazed and ungrazed sites, providing a natural experiment to test these questions. Dr. Fogarty will discuss effects on the total number of birds, species richness, and community composition in response to wildfire and grazing.
