What should we do to protect known populations?

Long answer

In this case the long answer is very close to the short answer. We know so little about the habitat requirements of individual lichen species, that prescription of buffer widths and other protection measures is mainly guesswork.

We do, however, have some general principles that can be applied to many situations of epiphyte habitat protection:

• Most rare epiphytic lichens are poor dispersers, needing relatively stable habitats.
• Many lichens thrive in "open shade", areas with plenty of diffuse light but with only partial direct sunlight.
• Many of the best lichen microhabitats are on the edges of "enforced openings", small- to medium-sized, more-or-less permanent openings enforced by areas of rock, water, wetlands, sand, or thin soil.
• Most epiphytes are suppressed by excessively dense young stands.
• Lichens in more exposed topographic positions (ridges, south slopes) tolerate more dense stands than in sheltered topographic positions (e.g. bottoms of narrow valleys, north slopes)

These principles need to be applied on a case-by-case basis.

For example, consider a thinning project of a young stand on a north slope, with scattered remnant trees. Some of the remnants support a listed species. Very likely that species occurs in remnants other than the one in which it was detected. Because it is on a north slope, a heavier thin may be tolerated, even near the tree with the listed species. One might prescribe retaining all the remnant trees, and heavily thinning the younger cohort. This should encourage establishment of the listed species on the remnants from the younger cohort.

To better protect the listed species we need long-term data on case studies, like the one given above. Furthemore, we can continue to assemble information on listed species, expanding the list of protection principles (above), and refining them for particular species.

See short answer

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