Four St. Edward’s University undergraduate students are taking advantage of fire mitigation work being conducted on Wild Basin’s perimeter to study the impacts of this land management work on native plant and wildlife species. Residents living in the “Wildland-Urban Interface” live with an increased risk of wildfire, as fuel loads are often in these areas high due to fire suppression. The creation of shaded fuel breaks is one of the tactics that land managers employ to try and minimize the risk of fire spreading from residential neighborhoods into preserved wilderness and vice-versa. Shaded fuel breaks reduce the understory fuel load and raise the base height of the canopy to prevent ground fires from leaping up into the canopy. Although this technique is commonly employed, little is known about its non-target effects.
The students, Jonathan Brooks, Michael Gembarowski, Conlon McOsker, and Madison Tumicki, working under Dr. Amy Concilio, are implementing a study in the treatment zone to measure the impacts of this treatment on plant and mammal diversity and abundance using a before-after-control-impact design. To measure changes in mammal movements, abundance, and diversity, the students set up 8 game cameras (4 in control, 4 in mitigated areas), all of which are along the fenced border of Wild Basin. They also surveyed overstory vegetation, canopy cover, and understory shrub cover at each of the 8 sites. Fuel treatments will begin in Oct 2018, and students will measure post-treatment vegetation and mammal movement after treatment is complete. The students predict that invasive species may become problematic based on their presence in pre-treatment plots, and that animal movement will change in response to canopy openings. Students will be presenting the results of their study at the Annual Conference of the Texas Society for Restoration Ecology.