Collaborative Conservation: Working for Woodlands, Wildlife, and You!

“Wow! You can really see the difference.” This was my reaction recently when I witnessed one private landowner's attempt to control glossy buckthorn on a powerline right-of-way (ROW) that bisected his 40-acre woodlot in Tilton. The area that was treated had little buckthorn, while the yet untreated area was dominated by buckthorn saplings.

As we looked down the ROW, down towards his neighbor's lot, I asked him if he shared his success with his neighbors yet. “They're likely having the same problem,” I pointed out. The landowner clearly saw the potential benefits of getting his neighbors on board with buckthorn control. If his neighbors were as successful as he, it would provide a buffer to future invasions that would help to maintain the health of his woodland in the long term, and would reduce the amount of time and money he would have to spend controlling buckthorn on his land in the future.

As land continues to get divided into smaller lots, it's going to become more and more important for neighbors to work together to maintain the health of their woodlands, maintain viable wildlife populations (the home range of many wildlife is greater than the size of a typical woodlot), and even provide satisfactory outdoor recreational opportunities without having significant negative impacts on other resources we care about (think about the potential impacts if every 20-acre woodlot owner created a series of hiking trails on his/her land).

The Northwood Area Land Management Collaborative (NALMC) is one, and perhaps the first effort in New Hampshire to do just that. NALMC (www.nalmc.net) is an informal group of private and public neighbors in Northwood and surrounding towns that work together across property boundaries to maintain and enhance the ecological, social, recreational, and economic resources of the local landscape. NALMC neighbors strive to do this through cross boundary communication of land ownership goals and objectives, heightening landowner knowledge of natural resources and land stewardship, and developing on-the-ground projects that will reap benefits across the NALMC neighborhood such as a recently completed section of trail that now provides a 5-mile loop trail across multiple properties.

NALMC was the brainchild of Carl Wallman, UNH Cooperative Extension Wildlife Specialist Matt Tarr, and myself representing the NH Fish & Game Dept. Currently, the NALMC neighborhood encompasses 3,034 acres of public and private lands including Carl's Harmony Hill Farm, the Fish & Game owned Forest Peters Wildlife Management Area, Northwood Meadows State Park, town land, UNH's Saddleback parcel, and a number of private lands. NALMC is currently working on a natural resources assessment of the entire NALMC neighborhood to help generate interest among other landowners in the NALMC neighborhood and to identify other potential on-the-ground projects. Collaborations such as NALMC will not only lead to additional stewardship successes, but can also help to build stronger community bonds.

If the objectives for your land include improving conditions for wildlife, maintaining the health and aesthetics of your woodland, and providing recreational opportunities, than consider collaborating with your neighbors. Doing so will provide you with a greater chance of stewardship success and may lead to new and fruitful friendships right next door.

Jim Oehler
New England Woodlands & Wildlife, LLC
www.newoodlands.com

New England Woodlands & Wildlife, LLC (NEWW) specializes in providing comprehensive land conservation services to private and public landowners across New Hampshire and southern New England.

The Ultimate Agent of Disturbance

As the sun beats down from the mid-morning sky, a farmer, bent down to secure his horses’ hitch to a plow, prepares for a long and arduous day of readying his fields for planting. Suddenly, the sky becomes dark. The farmer looks up from his work thinking the sudden darkness odd since there wasn’t a cloud in the sky all morning. As he looks up, his eyes grow large and his shoulders droop in amazement and awe at the site that lies before him.

The sky is loaded with birds! Wave upon wave of pigeons ascends from the south. The flock extends as far as the eye can see seeming to never end. The site is as frightening as it is awe inspiring to this new settler from the Old World who has never seen anything like it before in his life.

This sort of scenario may seem like something out of an 18th century version of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” but such a site was common in eastern North America during the 18th and early 19th century. The birds were passenger pigeons, whose nationwide population was estimated at 3-5 billion at the time Europeans discovered America. They were the most numerous birds in the nation, estimated to have comprised 25-40 percent of the total bird population of the U.S.

Stuffed passenger pigeon, Bird Gallery, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.
Taken from Wikipedia.org article on the passenger pigeon.

Passenger pigeons ranged from north Florida to eastern Texas, north to Alberta, east to Nova Scotia, and south along the Eastern seaboard. Their primary breeding range was considerably smaller ranging from southern New York, to Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky, north and west to southern Wisconsin, and east to southern Maine. The birds depended on the vast mixed hardwood forests in this region for their spring nesting sites, for roosting (i.e., resting) sites, and for food (they primarily ate beechnuts, chestnuts, acorns, seeds, and berries).

Distribution of passenger pigeons in North America. East of the solid line indicates the normal range, dotted line indicates the principal nesting area, and points signify accidental occurrences. Map from Schorger (1955). Copied from Ellsworth and McComb (2003).


In keeping with the old saying, these birds of a feather definitely flocked together and throughout every stage of their lives. Passenger pigeons often came up in the diaries and writings of early settlers. They often described pigeons roosting in such high densities that they covered every inch of medium to large tree branches. They even described pigeons roosting on the backs of others because of the lack of space. Some researchers estimate that there could have been 24,000-32,000 pounds (12 tons or more) of pigeon per acre in roosting sites. The entire 3-5 billion population of passenger pigeons would have impacted more than 9 million acres.

Nesting sites were larger and less densely populated than roosting sites, typically covering about 20,000 acres; although one exceptionally large nesting site recorded in Wisconsin covered an amazing 500,000 acres or two-thirds the size of the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. Such expansive nesting sites were located where there was a large mast supply that could support the thousands of pigeons during their 30-day nesting season. Researchers estimate that pigeon biomass could have exceeded 165 pounds per acre and that nesting sites of the entire 3-5 billion population would have impacted 24 million acres annually assuming that the pigeons nested twice each summer as many other breeding birds do.

Because of their shear number and communal ways, it is interesting to contemplate the impact they must have had on the forests of presettlement America. Two researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Josh Ellsworth and Brenda McComb, had this same interest and published an article a few years ago in the journal “Conservation Biology” which reviewed the potential impacts of these amazing creatures based on an extensive review of historical accounts, previous writings on the passenger pigeon, and some logical assumptions based on what is known about passenger pigeon ecology and forest succession.

TREES A TOPPLIN'

Because of the high density of pigeons in roosting areas, roosts probably caused a more significant disturbance to the forests of the eastern U.S. than nesting. Often there were so many pigeons in trees that small ones would topple under the pigeon’s weight while larger trees would suffer numerous broken branches. This would have caused a significant increase in the amount of sunlight hitting the forest floor with most of the canopy being removed. Such conditions would have favored shade intolerant trees such as aspen and birch and well established seedlings of moderately shade tolerant trees such as oaks and white pine. The result perhaps would have been similar to what we would see today in clearcut areas but with significantly more dead and dieing trees. Ellsworth and McComb estimate that 0.4 - 2% of the pigeons’ range would have been impacted annually.

Nesting sites would have seen an increase in sunlight on the forest floor as well, but because of the lower pigeon densities in nesting areas, the sunlight probably was patchier in nature, perhaps similar to thinnings or small group harvests conducted by today’s foresters. Such a condition would have favored shade tolerant trees such as beech, hemlock, and sugar maple. Oaks and white pines would have benefited in larger gaps. Ellsworth and McComb estimate that perhaps 8% of the breeding range would have been impacted annually.

GUANO OVERLOAD

Consider the amount of excrement deposited by the thousands of passenger pigeons that used roosting and nesting sites. In small amounts, it would likely have acted as an excellent fertilizer for the forest just as chicken excrement is commonly used to fertilize vegetable gardens. But passenger pigeons didn’t deposit just small amounts. Consider 20 inches of guano in roosts that we reused annually. This is fertilizing to the extreme. The result is dead vegetation. One ornithologist in the early 1800s reported seeing guano-covered roosts over thousands of acres in which there was no living tree, shrub, or forb. Although pigeon density was lower in nesting areas, guano likely had an impact in these areas as well because breeding pigeons were located in one place for 1 month.

A PENCHANT FOR RED OAKS, BEECHNUTS, AND CHESTNUTS

Ellsworth and McComb also postulates that passenger pigeons may also have had a hand in helping white oak become the most dominant oak species at the time Europeans discovered America. Native American’s use of fire was one of the reasons for white oak’s dominance. Passenger pigeons may have been another.

Passenger pigeons would have required an amazing amount of mast to support them during their 30-day breeding season. White oak acorns germinate in the fall and wouldn’t have been available to pigeons during their spring breeding. The acorns of red oaks as well as chestnuts and beechnuts were. Acorns are the primary means of reproduction for oaks. Fewer red oak acorns means fewer red oak trees. Beech trees reproduce both vegetatively via root sprouting and beechnut germination. If a lot of beechnuts get eaten, they can still survive, thrive, and reproduce. Unfortunately, the pigeon’s interaction with chestnut, often cited as the most common of all tree species during presettlement times, is not discussed by Ellsworth and McComb. Perhaps because they too can reproduce via root sprouting they were also able to thrive until the introduction of the blight.

The passenger pigeon undoubtedly had a tremendous impact on our landscape, but their impacts have not been realized since the mid-1800s. A combination of forest clearing for agriculture, and unregulated market hunting caused the pigeon’s demise. The American conservation movement was not born until the late 1800 and early 1900s, much too late to benefit the passenger pigeon whose populations suffered irreparable declines by that time. The last pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.


For more information on the passenger pigeon visit:

The Birds of Connecticut (1913): The Passenger Pigeon

The Smithsonian Encyclopedia's Article on the Passenger Pigeon

Potential Effects of Passenger Pigeon Flocks on the Structure and Composition of Presettlement
Forests of Eastern North America. Conservation Biology


Jim Oehler
New England Woodlands & Wildlife, LLC

New England Woodlands & Wildlife, LLC works throughout southern New England including New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island!