Sagehen Creek Experimental Forest is a collaborative research site between the University of California Berkeley and the U.S. Forest Service located in Tahoe National Forest. Like much of the Sierra Nevada, Sagehen was historically composed of a fairly open mixed-conifer forest… but a century of intense logging and a policy of fire suppression has resulted in a denser, more homogeneous forest structure.
The U.S. Forest Service is working to understand the impact this new forest structure has on wildlife and mitigate the dangers of catastrophic wildfires. As part of these efforts, the forest service conducted a series of fuel-reduction treatments across Sagehen Experimental Forest. In 2021, I joined a crew studying the effects of these treatments on the avian and small-mammal communities.
I started the summer conducting avian point counts to study the bird community across treatments, then switched to small-mammal live trapping – catching a range of species from tiny shrew species up to beefy California ground squirrels. Over the course of the summer I captured and tagged hundreds of individuals, sometimes well over a hundred per day!
Staging for another day at work!
Chipmunk (Neotamias, sp.) at play
Chipmunk (Neotamias, sp.)
Chipmunk (Neotamias, sp.)
Chipmunk (Neotamias, sp.)
