05/24/2017
AGENCIES PARTNER FOR TROUBLED GAME BIRDS
A state-agency partnership is creating more habitat for two troubled game birds and other wildlife species that rely on young forest.
Since 2011, the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources have teamed to restore thousands of acres of idle, difficult-to-manage habitat for ruffed grouse and woodcock on state forests.
The partnership, spearheaded by DCNR’s Emily Just, an ecologist with the Bureau of Forestry, and Lisa Williams, a Game Commission game birds biologist, has been helping state forests and parks personnel write plans to remedy what ails now marginal habitats that once supported substantial populations of the ol’ ruff and timberdoodles. Both depend on young forests, which have been declining in Pennsylvania for some time. Grouse covet young upland forest – preferably with some adjacent stands of more mature trees; woodcock need young forest and shrubby thickets in soggy lowlands that offers their favorite food, worms.
“Pennsylvania is currently at a 50-year-low for this critical habitat,” Williams explained. “The decline of young forest has been dramatic.”
Pennsylvania lost about 30 percent of its young forest between 1980 and 2005, and declines continue, Williams said. Just 5 percent of Pennsylvania forests are young – up to 19 years old, according to 2014 forest inventory data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service.
Reverting farm fields and bottomland, the loss of young forestland to tree maturation and land-use changes have hurt these popular native game birds. Sinking with their populations are somewhat obscure songbirds, like golden-winged and prairie warblers, the yellow-breasted chat and brown thrasher, as well as the more recognizable whip-poor-wills, box turtles and snowshoe hares.
Although grouse mortality also is tied to West Nile virus, habitat is the key to keeping the state bird abundant in Penn’s Woods. It’s a conclusion resource managers back.
Learn more about the new interagency habitat prescription service.
Information Courtesy of Email Updates from Pennsylvania Game Commission www.pgc.pa.gov