The Soboba Project on the San Bernardino National Forest is an effort to combine several strategies of chaparral management on 12.000 acres of typical southern California brushland. In chaparral, as in any ecosystem, biomass can be made to concentrate in higher trophic levels. Fire is an obvious agent, but different fire regimes applied to different cover types can produce a wide range of results. Burn planning is discussed, including size, season, rotation and alternatives. Other approaches deal with more subtle agents: structural diversity, the balance of protein and carbohydrates available to herbivores, and topographic factors which allow organic soil production and determine the distribution of water. Oak silviculture is considered as a technique for supplying the basic energy needed to exploit fully the temporary post-fire protein surges. Oaks and other valuable shrubs can be cultivated in conjunction with passive water impoundments which in the short turn provide increased free water and later silt in to become plateaus with stable aquifers and more fertile soils. A balance of all these elements ? carefully applied prescribed burning, water development and silviculture - is described as a program to optimize wildlife numbers and diversity within the limits of natural processes.
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