Monitoring Wildlife for Healthy Forests

November 25, 2022

Monitoring Wildlife for Healthy Forests

On the Land, Water, and Air

Protecting and restoring the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz mountains is no small task. Especially after all they have endured–clear-cut logging and fire suppression–and what we hope they can continue to endure: climate change. And as our Land Team can tell you, it's not always straightforward. While the size and majesty of a coast redwood often dominates the landscape, like all ecosystems, there is so much more than meets the eye–a complex, delicate, and intricate web of life comprised of the reciprocity of thousands of life forms from the microorganisms in the soil, fungi and insects, to the plants, trees, and wildlife. A bit like taking a temperature, monitoring wildlife can give us an indication of the health of the land and help to inform stewardship needed to restore its vitality.

What can monitoring wildlife on the land, water, and air tell us about recovery and recreation in the forest? Read on to learn more.

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photo by Pathways for Wildlife

Why Wildlife?

Unlike statuesque and stationary redwoods, the wildlife they help provide habitat for can be rather difficult to see–whether they’re well-camouflaged, super speedy, ranging across huge habitats, seasonal, or prefer to move under the cover of darkness. Monitoring wildlife can help to assess overall ecosystem health and give us a sense of what species are using different parts of the property, so we can plan projects as needed, coordinate with researchers, and assess areas and seasons to reduce use. Although wildlife often shy away from people, science has developed many ways to uncover the presence of wildlife on the land, in the water, and in the air.

End of the Range

The Santa Cruz mountains are close to the end of the range for redwoods, endangered coho salmon, and endangered marbled murrelets. This southernmost habitat marks the edge of favorable conditions like temperature and precipitation that these species need. And of course, climate change is pushing those temperatures higher and pushing the water cycle further into extreme undulations between drought and deluge. Monitoring these species here in the Santa Cruz mountains can not only give us invaluable data for the species as a whole but also inform adaptive management stewardship strategies.

Multifaceted partnerships with experts help to gather and analyze data to guide whether action is needed to better restore the natural processes altered by recent human impacts such as clear-cut logging, damming, and the introduction of invasive species.

“Protecting wildlife that are there is a part of our goal. Understanding where they are, what they are doing, and when helps us to manage the land holistically,” our Natural Resource Manager Beatrix Jiménez-Helsley explains. We monitor wildlife across our protected lands but San Vicente Redwoods has been a research hotspot–a living laboratory for field studies–for over a decade and with the upcoming opening of its new trails, we’re poised to learn even more.

Redwoods and Climate Part 3 Present Vs Historic Coast Redwood Range Map by Jane Kim, Ink Dwell

illustration by Ink Dwell.

San Vicente Redwoods

San Vicente Redwoods was protected in 2011 as a dynamic partnership with Peninsula Open Space Trust, Save the Redwoods League, and the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. Since then, San Vicente Redwoods’ nearly 9,000 acres including old-growth redwoods, oak woodlands, grasslands, and eight creeks have hosted a plethora of research from geomorphology studies on its unique karst systems underground to the many species that soar, roost, or nest in the redwood crowns and cliffs above. Countless things make San Vicente Redwoods extraordinary but with the partnerships’ plans to open San Vicente Redwoods for public recreation, being able to monitor wildlife before and after it opens is extremely valuable data.

Through various research approaches to wildlife monitoring, we are able to get a glimpse behind the curtain at the creatures in the land, water, and air.

Wildlife Monitoring San Vicente Redwoods By Ian Bornarth

photo by Ian Bornarth.

Land

photo by Ian Rowbotham.

Click a topic below to learn more about monitoring wildlife on the land:

Peregrine Falcons

photo by Roy W. Lowe, UFWS

In 1970, just two productive peregrine falcon nests could be found in all of California. Today, at least three peregrine falcon nests are known within a 15-mile radius of Santa Cruz alone–one of which is at San Vicente Redwoods. The nest, perched in rocky outcroppings, as peregrine falcons traditionally do, has been monitored by Predatory Bird Research Group at University California Santa Cruz for several years. Peregrine falcons remain fully protected in California, and successful hatchlings are banded to continue gathering information on the species.

Arguably the fastest animal on earth, with diving speeds estimated to reach over 200 miles per hour, monitoring peregrine falcons at nesting sites is far more conducive than trying to monitor them out and about. Unlike another protected species capable of impressive speeds.

Pumas

photo by Sebastian Kennerknecht

The largest creature currently roaming San Vicente Redwoods is the puma, which requires an understandably sizable habitat to sustain itself. Their extensive ranges are likely one reason only 40 known pumas are active in the Santa Cruz mountains. With habitat frequently interrupted by communities and development, it is difficult for pumas to access habitat and other puma populations they need to thrive.

Once thought to be solitary creatures, the Santa Cruz Mountains Puma Project’s research has uncovered invaluable insights about the mysterious and often misunderstood “ghost cats”. The team is monitoring pumas throughout the region and on San Vicente Redwoods employing an array of monitoring equipment including radio collars to track their behavior. Data from the Puma Project and wildlife monitoring cameras at San Vicente Redwoods helped to shed light on puma activity on the land. It also informed where to build the new hiking trails at San Vicente Redwoods to minimize disruption to wildlife pathways and avoid puma dens.

As our communities grow and habitat becomes less and less available, ensuring our time in nature has as little impact as possible on wildlife is paramount. Monitoring wildlife on our properties can help us adapt management plans based on the actual behaviors and needs of wildlife.

Wildlife Photo Index

In 2019, wildlife monitoring equipment was strategically deployed across San Vicente Redwoods to gather baseline data on how wildlife actually use the land. Motion sensor cameras positioned in key areas to capture wildlife presence and behavior have returned a treasure trove of data–as well as pretty fantastic wildlife selfies. Here are our Top 12 shots of wildlife at San Vicente Redwoods so far:

Wildlife monitoring photos with our San Vicente Redwoods partners Peninsula Open Space Trust, Save the Redwoods League, and Land Trust of Santa Cruz County by Pathways for Wildlife.

Click below to learn more about the next steps in monitoring wildlife on the land:

Next Steps

With several years of wildlife camera data, we can compare when, where, and how wildlife use the forest before and after public access. This will help us to understand the direct impacts of the trails on wildlife when San Vicente Redwoods’ trails open to the public on December 3, 2022. How much will wildlife behavior change after the presence of people?

We and our research partners will continue to monitor wildlife populations to inform if any changes to the adaptive management plan are needed, helping to ensure ecosystem health over time so these magnificent creatures can continue to thrive at San Vicente Redwoods alongside human populations.

The trails will just be the latest addition of what makes managing San Vicente Redwoods unique. Its vast size encompassing diverse habitats supports many types of plants and wildlife including rare, threatened, and endangered species which are helpful to monitor to ensure they are supported. These species are often sensitive to changes in the habitat so if they thrive in this ecosystem many more plants and wildlife will also benefit.

Motion sensor cameras have truly increased our ability to detect wildlife on the land we would rarely see otherwise. But what about wildlife in the water or air? Especially for species that are already rare to begin with?

Water

photo by Ian Bornarth.

Click a topic below to learn more about monitoring wildlife in the water:

Coho Salmon

photo by Bureau Of Land Management

At the southern end of their range, already endangered coho salmon have been an even rarer sight in the Santa Cruz mountains for the last several decades. Living their lives at sea and following streams into the mountains to spawn in forest-shaded fresh waters, as generations before them have done, coho rely on two different types of habitat, effectively doubling the effects of climate change.

For more than a century a defunct dam in Mill Creek at San Vicente Redwoods blocked coho from moving upstream, and blocked cobble from moving downstream to create crucial spawning beds. With plans to remove the dam and restore the critical habitat for endangered coho and the entire watershed, researchers from University of California Los Angeles and Amah Mutsun Land Trust conducted eDNA surveys along Mill Creek–collecting water samples to find environmental DNA in the water–evidence of its fish populations while the dam was still in place.

Before the dam could be removed, lightning ignited the CZU wildfire in 2020 which burned nearly all of San Vicente Redwoods. A small silver-lining to the devastating fire was that while it damaged crucial water infrastructure for the town of Davenport, its subsequent repair and replacement made removing the dam possible. So, after a century of damming and a decade of planning its removal, the dam face itself came down in about a day. Soon after, an epic storm helpfully washed critical cobble downstream to help establish suitable spawning grounds around Large Woody Debris structures.

Before, during, and after the dam’s removal, aquatic biologists monitored the creek habitat and its inhabitants helping to guide the project with the health of both top of mind. A particularly phenomenal monitoring visit occurred less than a year after the dam had been removed. The team, equipped with nets, buckets, and an electronic fishing pack, carefully inspected Mill Creek for fish–and the very first fish they found that day was an endangered coho salmon–the first sighting ever recorded in the creek. The fish were quickly and carefully measured, counted, logged and returned to the water. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife was able to take fin clippings from the coho salmon for DNA and genetic testing that can determine down to a family level where the coho came from–providing a better understanding of this species’ migration and this exciting sighting.

Next Steps

Beatrix assessing Mill Creek's flows for Large Woody Debris installations, by Ian Bornarth

While we await the results of these substantive first steps into the past and present of Mill Creek’s fish populations, research continues to inform our next steps. University of California Los Angeles and Amah Mutsun Land Trust researchers plan to obtain new eDNA samples from Mill Creek to see if there is any evidence of early changes in the fish community since the dam’s removal.

Large Woody Debris installations recreate natural conditions in the creek that catch cobble and sediment to form gravel beds suitable for spawning and provide shelter and creek crossings. Based on the initial progress of Large Woody Debris installations, our Senior Land Stewardship Manager Ian Rowbotham says more structures will be designed and permitted over the next year and a half to capture more sediment as it continues to shift and move down the creek over time.

And ongoing surveys with our Land Team members and aquatic biologists will monitor both the fish and the creek as cobble and sediment continue to move downstream to form potential spawning beds to see if any further action is needed.

“If endangered coho salmon successfully spawn in Mill Creek, it will point towards the benefits of restoration,” Ian says.

Ian and Beatrix explain monitoring is the key to adaptive management. “We monitor to see if anything is needed, and if so, we take strategic actions to restore natural processes to play out as they would have without human impacts,” Ian says.

“We try to restore ecosystem services so it can be self-sufficient and native species can return,” Beatrix agreed. But what she noted further complicates matters: not everything is the same as it was before those human impacts–bears and regular cultural burning are no longer present in the Santa Cruz mountains but climate change and invasive species are.

Invasive species present an ongoing stewardship struggle as without natural local predators to keep them in check they can quickly outcompete native species and disrupt natural processes. Invasive plants like Clematis vitalba had to be removed from choking Mill Creek and much of the forest, and non-native wildlife like bullfrogs can take over ponds and take out native species like the endangered California red-legged frog.

Stay Tuned for Amphibians

A slender salamander in a spiral, by Ian Bornarth

Researchers with University of California Santa Cruz have conducted amphibian surveys at San Vicente Redwoods to get a better understanding of what native and invasive species are currently present. They are compiling data and creating an amphibian field guide that should be available in 2023. In the winter, when it's wetter, they hope to do additional salamander surveys with in-person methods.

These varied approaches to monitoring aquatic wildlife help to provide a picture of all the species currently present–those we can see and even those we can’t through evidence left in the water. In a similar regard, monitoring wildlife in the air, particularly notoriously mysterious species, can be accomplished through evidence in the air.

Air

photo by Canopy Dynamics.

Click below to learn more about the next steps in monitoring wildlife in the air:

Marbled Murrelets

by G. Bartley

When the CZU wildfire burned 86,500 acres, including the first ever recorded location of a marbled murrelet’s nest–in Big Basin Redwoods State Park–it was feared it could be a major if not final blow to the already endangered seabird’s presence in the Santa Cruz mountains. Yet just one year later, another incredible first occurred in Big Basin, a marbled murrelet was filmed fledging its nest. This was a great sign of hope for the resilience of the redwood forest, the Santa Cruz mountains, and for this struggling species in the most southern stronghold of its range.

Marbled murrelets, described as a flying potato, spend much of their life on the ocean but like the coho salmon make their way inland to the forests to lay their eggs. Nesting atop old-growth trees like the redwoods and Douglas-firs in the Santa Cruz mountains, Ornithologist Steve Singer had estimated about 50% of their suitable habitat had been lost in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. While nearly all of the redwoods are expected to recover in time, their canopies were still impacted and a much heavier toll was taken on their less fire resistant Douglas-fir neighbors which are unable to recover through epicormic sprouting as redwoods can. Needless to say, the CZU wildfire left the fate of the seabird looking bleak until a nest was discovered in Big Basin again in 2021.

Adapted to return to the forest for nesting, adult marbled murrelets turn a mottled brown during breeding season, making them more difficult to spot in the canopy. Despite being described as potatoes, they are deceptively fast. Their stubby wings–suited for flying underwater–are also well-adapted for the forest. Beatrix says they can fly up to 100 miles per hour–to help them evade predators in the forest. Their comparatively small wing size means they have to beat their wings constantly and rapidly to stay aloft.

Perhaps more potato-like, is their maneuverability. Although they have fast wing beats, they can’t hover like hummingbirds nor can they make any sudden turns. A hummingbird beats its wings between 10 and 80 times per second. Having been trained to conduct inland field surveys for marbled murrelets the last two years, Beatrix can attest to hearing their fast wing beats–which she says sound like a boomerang– and their calls–referred to as “keers”– across the sky far more often than she could track them flying under the cover of darkness.

Marbled murrelet calling bout spectogram, by Conservation Metrics

While most of our properties burned in the CZU wildfire’s considerable footprint, remarkably marbled murrelets have been detected at 3 out of 5 monitoring locations. So how do we monitor for these rare, elusive birds unlikely to be seen in-person or to conveniently land in front of a monitoring camera? Through the air. Acoustic Recording Units set to record at marbled murrelets’ most active times in the forest–around sunrise and sunset–were set at 5 different locations by staff. The hundreds of hours of field recordings were then processed with a pattern recognition software to specifically detect the “keer” calls of marbled murrelets allowing the researchers to hone their manual review in on high probability calls and check for the sound of wing beats before and after which could indicate proximity to a nesting site.

Next Steps

Steller's jay at San Vicente Redwoods by Pathways For Wildlife

The Audio Recording Units were able to record detections of marbled murrelets, but the recording can’t tell us if the marbled murrelets are nesting or whether any marbled murrelets hatched–although wing beats would have been an indication. For that, Beatrix says the first step would be in-person surveys to confirm if they’re occupying the tree stands. To increase the effectiveness and efficiency of in-person surveys, Beatrix will meet with other land managers and experts in the Zone 6 area–U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s official name for this section of marbled murrelet habitat–to coordinate collective efforts to monitor marbled murrelets with Acoustic Recording Units and in-person surveys. In the long term, potential nesting habitat at San Vicente Redwoods is being restored to enhance conditions for the forest and for marbled murrelets. For now, the marbled murrelets are out to sea.

While we await their return, we can all play an important part in helping to prepare for potential nesting by keeping our parks and lands “Crumb Clean”. Marbled murrelet eggs can fall prey to corvids including jays, ravens, and crows, which tend to follow human presence in hopes of crumbs. As the trails at San Vicente Redwoods open, we’ll continue to monitor for corvids to see if human presence leads to an increase in these opportunistic birds and identify whether any changes in use are needed to help protect marbled murrelets.

You can read about a rare marbled murrelet fledgling encounter and our regional in-depth monitoring to support this endangered species.

Stay Tuned for Bats

by USFWS

Important nocturnal pollinators and natural insect control, bats are an important part of the ecosystem and have been known to roost in the hollows of redwoods among other places–including a pond at San Vicente Redwoods where a bat detector was installed this fall. Once the acoustic sensor has been analyzed to determine which species have been detected, Dr. Winifred Frick with Bat Conservation International hopes to be able to monitor bats on the property more extensively when they are more active in the late spring and summer months. In the meantime, you can read about bats documented at San Vicente Redwoods during previous surveys.

Sensitive Species, Significant Signs

The presence of marbled murrelets and coho salmon–two sensitive species–after the CZU wildfire are encouraging signs for the continued recovery of the forest, although populations fluctuate naturally and many other factors can come into play that can affect wildlife species. For marbled murrelets and coho salmon in particular, these endangered species rely on two different habitats which doubles the potential impacts from human activity such as oil spills and dams as well as greater shifts from climate change. Monitoring and collaborating with experts and landowners across the region helps to provide the bigger picture of the species as a whole and the potential for coordinating adaptive management across a greater swath of the range, hopefully benefitting more coho, marbled murrelets, and many more species in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Wildlife Monitoring San Vicente Redwoods By Teddy Miller

photo by Teddy Miller.

Monitoring and Management

During the next few years of monitoring, we will gain a better understanding of the wildlife that inhabit San Vicente Redwoods and will be able to see if the presence of people significantly impacts wildlife’s behavior or movement in the forest and how we can minimize the effects. With adaptive land management and data on what species use areas at different times, projects can be scheduled when they will affect less wildlife and can be added opportunistically to support specific wildlife like Large Woody Debris installations for coho salmon. Wildlife monitoring has ever-growing potential to help balance needs in the San Vicente Redwoods through adaptive land management. Thanks to our partners, The Arthur L. and Elaine V. Johnson Foundation, The William H. and Mattie Wattis Harris Foundation, Resource Legacy Fund, and supporters like you, these invaluable projects can inform future trails, land management, and a deeper regional understanding of how land can be shared by people and wildlife for generations to come.

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More to Explore

Learn more about Redwoods, Pumas, and People
Read more about restoring Mill Creek for coho salmon
Watch The Marvels and Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet with Portia Halbert

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Monitoring Wildlife for Healthy Forests

Monitoring Wildlife for Healthy Forests

On the Land, Water, and Air

Why Wildlife?

End of the Range

San Vicente Redwoods

Wildlife Photo Index

Sensitive Species, Significant Signs

Monitoring and Management

More to Explore

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