Forest Return To Natural Order Is Welcome

“Logging creates habitat for some wildlife,” said the headline on an Associated Press story published recently in The Spokesman-Review.

Unfortunately, the headline was far more accurate than the information contained within the story by David Pace.

The story says some species of birds using brushy habitats are in decline because too little logging and too much wilderness preservation is depriving some wildlife species of habitat they need to survive.

The primary source for the story is Jim Woehr, a senior scientist with the Wildlife Management Institute in Washington, D.C.

The argument seems truthful on the surface, but the issue is far more complex.

Woehr misuses data gathered by the Breeding Bird Survey to make his case for logging Eastern forests to aid the survival of certain bird species. He also ignores the historical evolution of Eastern forest ecosystems.

The bird species he mentions - the golden-winged warbler, Eastern towhee, yellow-breasted chat and prairie warbler - have indeed been in decline for 30 years. That statement is also true of 50 percent of all neotropical migratory birds - species that breed and rear young in the United States and Canada while over-wintering from Mexico through South America.

To put Woehr’s argument in perspective, one must examine the ecological transformation in the United States.

When the first colonists set foot on the North American continent, the East was covered with deciduous and coniferous forests. Indian tribes had manipulated the landscape with fire, creating a mosaic of open, park-like forests that abounded with elk, deer, bear, turkey, quail and ruffed grouse.

Because game was so plentiful, the forests also held many associated predator species like eagles, owls, lynxes and wolves.

Colonists built homes and cleared forests for agricultural purposes and soon learned that timber was a valuable commodity, not just locally, but for lumber-starved England. By 1694, deforestation, competition from livestock, and over-hunting caused some colonies to impose closed seasons for killing deer and other herbivores. In 1718, Massachusetts closed hunting for three years.

Elk, moose, bears, lynxes, turkeys, eagles and migratory birds had disappeared over a large portion of their range.

As Eastern forests vanished from the landscape, plains species from the Midwest began to move into the unoccupied terrain and make use of newly created habitats. For instance, the loggerhead shrike hadn’t occurred east of the Appalachian Mountains until the Eastern forests were cleared and the Midwest settled.

As the habitat began to grow back, shrikes started to decline and have virtually disappeared from New England.

As forests regenerate, some successional bird species have indeed begun to disappear in the East. As forests mature, bird species tied to prairie and shrubby habitats are being driven back to where they belong.

Populations of formerly imperiled woodland species like the hermit thrush, red-eyed vireo, magnolia warbler, black-throated blue warbler and blue-gray gnatcatcher are starting to stabilize.

Bruce Peterjohn, bird monitoring coordinator at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, said, “If you cut down the trees it will certainly improve the habitat for successional birds at the cost of woodland bird communities that are just starting to recover and stabilize.”

Peterjohn also pointed out the main issue for the golden-winged warbler is range exchange with the blue-winged warbler.

Blue-wing populations have been steadily moving north and hybridizing with golden-wings.

The bird species mentioned by Woehr as suffering from a 30-year decline are neither threatened, nor endangered. According to Peterjohn, “Birds occupying mature habitat are the real issue because we’ve eliminated so much of their habitat. If you cut down the rest of it, these species will be gone to the benefit of species that aren’t in any trouble.”

Indeed, many woodland birds of the Southern forests are either gone or in serious decline. The ivory-billed woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in America and the second largest in the world, is considered extinct. The bird once occupied the vast forests of the southern United States. Its main food supply was larvae of wood-boring beetles found in dead and dying trees.

The red-cockaded woodpecker is struggling to survive in what remains of its habitat. The bird is restricted to nesting in southern long-leaf pine forests that occupy 2-3 percent of its former range.

Trying to make an analogy between the management of Eastern forests and Western forests and their resultant bird communities is a serious non sequitur. According to Peterjohn, “Woodland trends in the East are exactly the opposite of those in the West.”

Now that logging is being restricted in the West to aid the recovery of species that really are imperiled, the eye of industry is once again focusing on Eastern forests.

Habitat destruction and the burgeoning human population were identified long ago as the reasons for nationwide declines in bird populations.