Wildlife & Critters | Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project

Globally, the World Wildlife Fund estimates that plant and animal species abundance has declined 69 percent since 1970 of which a 94 percent decline has occurred in Latin America, a hotspot of biodiversity.

In North America, NatureServe, the authoritative source of biodiversity data, estimates that 34 percent of plants and 40 percent of animals are at risk of extinction, while 41 percent of North America’s ecosystems are at risk of range-wide collapse.

When we think about wildlife’s habitat requirements, we readily recognize they are different from our own. Where we daily import our food, water, energy, etc. locally and from across the globe, wildlife must attain all the resources they need from local sources every day of the year to survive.

More specifically, the DCFP focuses their effort on maintaining and restoring the habitat needs by the most vulnerable wildlife species, which are the listed species, along with the most economically and socially important species such as mule deer, songbirds, and forest carnivore. The habitat restored and the species’ that benefit is dictated by the biophysical setting (elevation, slope, aspect, precipitation, etc.), which determines what habitat can grow and be sustained on each forest site.