Many wildlife species are negatively impacted by the construction and presence of wildland roads. Road decommissioning is being used as a tool to mitigate this problem on Forest Service lands, but no research or monitoring program has measured if wildlife populations recover following decommissing. This report outlines methods to monitor terrestrial wildlife on decommissioned roads. These methods should help standardize procedures to assess changes in wildlife diversity, distribution, and relative abundance before and after road decommissioning. Additionally, a sample design is proposed to collect information in a systematic way to analyze it statistically, look for trends over time, and to compare to other decommissioning projects. A pilot study is currently being conducted in the Clearwater National Forest, ID to test the methods in this protocol.

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