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Understanding interactions among site occupancy, reproduction, vegetation, and disturbance for threatened species can improve conservation measures, because important aspects of vegetation and disturbances may be identified and managed. We used 9 yr of survey data collected at 168 sites to investigate dynamic site occupancy and reproduction in a declining population of California Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) in southern California, USA. We used multistate models to examine the relationship among owl site occupancy, reproduction, high-severity wildland fire, and postfire logging, while accounting for variation in vegetation characteristics and variation in detectability. Both occupancy and reproduction were positively correlated with successful reproduction in the previous year. Tree cover (ha) in a site's 203-ha core area also was positively correlated with both occupancy and reproduction. We detected no effect of disturbance covariates on reproduction, given that a site was occ...

High-severity forest fire often is presumed to adversely affect the occupancy of territories by California Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) because these owls are associated with mature and old-growth forests. We used single-season, multi-state occupancy statistics to estimate site occupancy probability for Spotted Owls at 45 historically occupied sites during the breeding season immediately following the 2013 Rim Fire, which was one of the largest forest fires on record in California. We quantified how occupancy probability was influenced by the amount of high-severity fire occurring in mature forested habitat within Protected Activity Centers (PACs). The model-averaged estimate of site-occupancy probability for at least a single owl was 0.922 (±SE = 0.073), which was higher than other published occupancy probability estimates for this subspecies in either burned or long-unburned sites in the Sierra Nevada. Mean site-occupancy probability for pairs was 0.866 (±0.093), and most site...

The Black-backed Woodpecker (Picoides arcticus) is a species of conservation concern that is strongly associated with recently burned forests. Black-backed Woodpeckers are known to have variable home-range sizes, yet the ecological factors related to this variation have not been adequately explored and may hold insights into the natural history of the species and the management of its habitat. During 2011 and 2012, we radio-tracked Black-backed Woodpeckers nesting in 3 forested areas of California that burned between 2 and 5 years before the initiation of tracking. Among 15 individuals with robust tracking data, we found that home-range size varied by an order of magnitude, from 24.1 to 304.1 ha, as measured by movement-based kernel estimation. Using an information-theoretic approach, we evaluated the functional relationship between snag basal area—an a priori key resource—and home-range size, additionally controlling for sex, age, and years since fire as covariates. We found that snag basal area...