Rare Plant Monitoring

Woman kneels down next to PVC frame to count flowers

Sierra Cascade Province ecologists work closely with forest botanists to monitor the effects of management activities, like prescribed fire, fuel reduction, timber harvest, and grazing, on rare plant populations. These efforts have provided important insight into rare plant monitoring and management. For example, we have found that management activities such as prescribed burning and thinning can be effective tools for promoting and improving the long-term resilience of rare plant populations – if designed correctly. Many of the rare plants that we monitor occur in habitats where low-intensity fire was once common. Designing effective rare plant management actions requires understanding the appropriate scale and intensity of disturbances, like fire, that are needed to maintain rare plant populations and habitat conditions.

In order to develop effective management prescriptions, rare plant monitoring programs should consider a few key components:

Evaluate treatment intensity. Some species tolerate or even thrive after high intensity treatments (such as high severity fire or tree removal to create gaps), while others require lower intensity treatment to persist.
Measure environmental variables. Understanding the local conditions where rare plant species occur is crucial for understanding a species’ response to treatment and for designing future management activities.
Monitor over a longer time period. A longer (>3 year) monitoring timeframe is often necessary to detect initial population declines and recovery.

There are numerous challenges associated with monitoring rare species, including low numbers of individuals or populations and very limited information about the ecology of individual species. Despite these hurdles, we hope that the information gleaned from these and other monitoring efforts will be useful for guiding management and inspiring future studies.