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Studies in southwest Oregon suggest that riparian areas within mixed-conifer forests historically burned with frequencies and intensities similar to upland areas and that fire played an important role in maintaining both of these ecosystems. Currently, most fuel reduction projects do not include riparian, due to the perception that these riparian areas are negatively affected by anthropogenic disturbance. However, there is very little information on the ecological consequences of including riparian areas in fuel reduction projects. We compared the effects of non-commercial thin and handpile treatments followed by prescribed burns in riparian areas of intermittent and perennial streams that were treated to the streamside (unbuffered), to the typical prescription in which sites were treated only in the adjacent upland (buffered). Unbuffered fuel reduction treatments have the potential to affect bird density and reproductive …