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PGC working hard to help game birds

HARRISBURG — 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 Agri-culture’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.

“Waiting until they’re almost gone and require hefty emergency care to save is not an option,” Williams emphasized.

So Williams and Just came up with an approach that evolved into an interagency habitat prescription service that leans heavily on collaboration and cooperation. They head into the hills to work with DCNR foresters on projects for grouse and woodcock throughout the state. They figure their teamwork has led to about 1,000 acres of new grouse and woodcock habitat being created annually.

Just said their now established campaign started from outreach to forestry staff on opportunities to begin improving poor-quality stands, carefully working in forest buffers, or targeting hard-to-manage sites for grouse and woodcock through on-site visits. This thinking-outside-the-box approach supplements the positive effects that forest-management activities have on wildlife.

“The first year, a couple of districts were interested, and then it just took off,” Just recalled. “We started with foresters on ‘orphaned’ sites – primarily woodcock habitat. Moist-soil areas where they couldn’t do traditional work.”

To get the ball rolling, Williams and Just walk sites with foresters, talk to them about their objectives and their equipment limitations.

Williams and Just have a reputation among DCNR’s foresters for requesting as many targeted objectives for birds as they can –strewn trunks and treetops left on site for grouse, open clearings with shrubby thickets for woodcock, control of invasive plants and targeted promotion of beneficial trees and shrubs. Depending on the site, they also might appeal for softer, shrubbier woodland edges, tree islands and aspen or alder regeneration.

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