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Forest Journalism for a Sustainable Future

Pennsylvania couple manages forest for abundant wildlife, biodiversity

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Mike and Laura Jackson own 114 acres in south-central Pennsylvania, where they are managing their forests to yield top-notch wildlife habitat. Photo: NRCS.

Editor’s note: From the kitchen table to the boardroom table, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) brings people together across the nation for: healthier food, natural resources and people; a stronger agricultural industry; and economic growth, jobs and innovation. Each Friday, meet those farmers, producers and landowners through the agency’s #Fridaysonthefarm stories.

This Friday, we head to Bedford County, Pennsylania, where avid birders Mike and Laura Jackson are managing their forests to provide high-quality habitat for wildlife.

For Mike and Laura, many mornings begin with hot tea and birds. This particular morning, they spotted a mourning dove, a pileated woodpecker and many others. And the retired science teachers jot down the types and numbers of birds they see each day.

Their morning drink even reminds them of a bird — the Eastern towhee, whose song sounds like, “Drink your tea.” [Read more…]

USFWS reverses course, works to remove endangered species protections from lynx

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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed course late last week and made a recommendation to remove endangered species protections from lynx.
A cousin of the more common bobcat, the Canada lynx can be distinguished by its black-tipped tail, long tufts of black hair at the tips of its ears, and long legs with large, furry paws for hunting snowshoe hares in deep snow. Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

With a Jan. 15 deadline looming to issue a recovery plan for the Canada lynx, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed course late last week and recommended taking the species off the list of animals threatened by extinction.

The agency released a statement concluding the Canada lynx may no longer warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act and should be considered for delisting.

The Canada lynx was listed as a threatened species in the lower 48 states in 2000, after years of declining populations and threats to their habitat on public lands. Canada lynx are found in Maine, northeast Minnesota, northwest Montana, northeast Idaho, north-central Washington and western Colorado. The cats feed mainly on snowshoe hare rabbits.

The move to delist the lynx seemed to have caught the conservation community by surprise, after a 2016 draft report outlined the challenges that the species still faced. [Read more…]

Will forest thinning and burning save Mexican spotted owls, or harm them?

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A prescribed fire burns through Mexican spotted owl habitat south of Flagstaff, Arizona. Photo: Shaula Hedwall

The firefighters moved through the ponderosa pine forest in darkness, intentionally setting fires with drip torches as they moved down a hill near Mormon Lake, about 40 miles south of Flagstaff, Arizona.

A few trees burst into flame, mimicking the report of a .22, but the night was cool and moist and most of the flames stayed beneath the trees.

Shaula Hedwall, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who oversees recovery of the threatened Mexican spotted owl in most of the Southwest, proposed the fire to test how controlled burns and forest thinning will affect the species.

She’s testing the hypothesis that thinning and burning will protect the long-term viability of the bird’s habitat from severe wildfires by reducing the available fuel and the density of trees after a century of fire suppression.

Still, Hedwall was nervous as she watched the line of flames creep down the hill. [Read more…]

Researcher: When Alaskan brown bears change food sources, forests change too

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A brown bear snags a sockeye salmon in Alaska. In warm years, red elderberries ripen early and Kodiak bears leave streams full of salmon to eat them. Photo: Jonathan Armstrong, CC BY-ND

After several years of studying brown bear ecology on Alaska’s Kodiak Island, I grew used to walking up streams into scenes of carnage. Where bears had killed and eaten spawning sockeye salmon, streambeds were littered with fish heads, jaws and whole carcasses, and plants on the stream banks were flattened. But at the peak of the stream spawning run in 2014, I was puzzled to find no bears or salmon parts. Salmon were dying naturally after spawning and piling up in streams, intact.

I’ve spent the last three years trying to solve this ecological puzzle. After extensive field and lab work along with researchers from Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, Flathead Lake Biological Station and Oregon State University, we arrived at a fascinating conclusion.

In warm years, another favorite bear food – red elderberries – ripened early enough to overlap with the salmon season. This forced bears to choose between the foods. Surprisingly, almost all bears opted for berries over salmon. This choice has likely altered food webs, and will become increasingly common with expected climate warming. [Read more…]

Fire birds are back, and thriving, in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens

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Bill Haines, left, the owner of Pine Island Cranberry Company, and Jimmy Sloan, right, of N.J. Fish and Wildlife, release wild quail onto Pine Island property in Chatsworth, New Jersey. Photo: John Parke/N.J. Audubon

Fire has returned to New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, and with it the fire birds that disappeared in the 1980s because of habitat loss.

New Jersey Audubon started reintroducing bobwhite quail to a Pine Island cranberry farm in 2015, toting the birds to their new home from Georgia.

The migrants built and populated nests later that year, and more reintroductions followed. Now Bill Haines, the farm’s owner, has been awarded the National Fire Bird Conservation Award from the National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative. [Read more…]