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Restoring habitat in retired farmland could reduce water demand and provide ecosystem services for farmers and local communities.

Riparian ecosystems provide important ecosystem services and recreational opportunities for people, and habitat for wildlife. In California’s Central Valley, government agencies and private organizations are working together to protect and restore riparian ecosystems, and the Central Valley Joint Venture provides leadership in the formulation of goals and objectives for avian conservation in riparian ecosystems. We defined a long-term conservation goal as the establishment of riparian ecosystems that provide sufficient habitat to support genetically robust, self-sustaining, and resilient bird populations. To achieve this goal, we selected a suite of 12 breeding riparian landbird focal species as indicators of the state of riparian ecosystems in each of four major Central Valley planning regions. Using recent bird survey data, we estimated that over half of the regional focal species populations are currently small (< 10,000) and may be vulnerable to extirpation, and two species have steeply declining population trends. For each focal species in each region, we defined long-term (100-year) population objectives that are intended to be conservation endpoints that we expect to meet the goal of genetically robust, self-sustaining, and resilient populations. We then estimated the long-term species density and riparian restoration objectives required to achieve the long-term population objectives. To track progress toward the long-term objectives, we propose short-term (10- year) objectives, including the addition of 12,919 ha (31,923 ac) of riparian vegetation in the Central Valley (by planning region: 3,390 ha in Sacramento, 2,390 ha in Yolo–Delta, 3,386 ha in San Joaquin, and 3,753 ha in Tulare). We expect that reaching these population, density, and habitat objectives through threat abatement, habitat restoration, and habitat enhancement will result in improvements to riparian ecosystem function and resilience that will benefit other wildlife populations and the people of the Central Valley and beyond.

Quantitative population objectives are necessary to successfully achieve conservation goals of secure or robust wildlife populations. However, existing methods for setting quantitative population objectives commonly require extensive species-specific population viability data, which are often unavailable or are based on estimates of historical population sizes, which may no longer represent feasible objectives. Conservation practitioners require an alternative, science-based method for setting long-term quantitative population objectives. We reviewed conservation biology literature to develop a general conceptual framework that represents conservation biology principles and identifies key milestones a population would be expected to pass in the process of becoming a recovered or robust population. We then synthesized recent research to propose general hypotheses for the orders of magnitude at which most populations would be expected to reach each milestone. The framework is structured as a hierarchy of four population sizes, ranging from very small populations at increased risk of inbreeding depression and extirpation (< 1,000 adults) to large populations with minimized risk of extirpation (> 50,000 adults), along with additional modifiers describing steeply declining and resilient populations. We also discuss the temporal and geographic scales at which this framework should be applied. To illustrate the application of this framework to conservation planning, we outline our use of the framework to set long-term population objectives for a multi-species regional conservation plan, and discuss additional considerations in applying this framework to other systems. This general framework provides a transparent, science-based method by which conservation practitioners and stakeholders can agree on long-term population objectives of an appropriate magnitude, particularly when the alternative approaches are not feasible. With initial population objectives determined, long-term conservation planning and implementation can get underway, while further refinement of the objectives still remains possible as the population’s response to conservation effort is monitored and new data become available.

Assessing dominant land cover change is critical to understanding the terrestrial consequences of climate change. This study created digital maps from a portion of a heritage vegetation survey of California, the Wieslander Vegetation Type Map survey of the 1930s. Digital maps were produced for a 30,236 km2 area of the Sierra Nevada. These historical data were compared with CalVeg, a 1996 vegetation map produced by the US Forest Service. In addition, the extent of Pinus ponderosa forests on the Placerville quadrangle was compared to a historical map from 1850 as well as the 1934 map.At low elevations, blue oak (Quercus douglasii) and foothill pine (Pinus sabiniana) areas have largely converted to grasslands. At about 1000 meters elevation, the lower edge of the “Yellow Pine Belt” (dominated by Pinus ponderosa) has retreated upslope about 180 meters between 1934 and 1996, and by 526 meters since 1850. Grazing, competition by nonnative grasses, and fire occurred on only 42% of the total area of change.The authors hypothesize failure of conifer seedling establishment due to earlier Sierra snowmelts caused by warmer temperatures. The lower edge of the Sierran conifer belt appears to be sensitive to climate change, a conclusion with implications for the water‐holding capacity of the mountains.

Pygmy Palm-Swift Micropanyptila furcata is endemic to the Maracaibo Basin of Venezuela and Colombia. Described by Sutton in 1928, it is still known only from < 30 museum specimens from seven localities, leading it to be included in the first edition of the bird Red Data Book, but not subsequent editions. During a field survey in January 1995 we regularly encountered this species throughout the south-eastern Maracaibo Basin in Venezuela, at elevations from 30 m to 800 m. We found them in a variety of habitats including cleared pastures, cropland, open forest and rural towns, and observed them near mature cultivated palms, which represented nesting and roosting substrates. Pygmy Palm-Swifts foraged in small groups immediately above the treetops and over grass savannah. As we recorded them at nearly all previously known sites and many additional ones, often in close proximity to human activities and potential sources of disturbance, we suggest that it is not a rare bird and currently does not require special status or conservation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]