Cranberry Mountain Wildlife Management Area, New York

Carving Out Cottontail Habitat in a Forested Setting

Cranberry Mountain Wildlife Management Area includes 469 mainly forested acres, with some grassy and weedy fields, on a mountain east of the Hudson River where New York’s Putnam and Dutchess counties meet. The state Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) owns and manages the property.

Open to the public, the WMA is maintained as wildlife habitat. It’s also in a Focus Area for conserving the New England cottontail.

Fresh young forest thriving on Cranberry Mountain WMA has already begun to provide important food and cover for a beleaguered local population of New England cottontails./A. Cheeseman

The New England cottontail population has fallen throughout the region for more than 50 years as the animal’s preferred young forest habitat dwindled as a result of development and forest maturation.

Cranberry Mountain WMA has a small population of New England cottontails. To make more habitat for them, conservationists brought in a large "brontosaurus" machine to chew down trees that were shading out and preventing the growth of the low, thick, shrubby vegetation where cottontails can find food, breed, and evade predators. The machine went to work in winter 2014. Essentially, it recreated the effects of a natural disturbance, such as a fire or a windstorm, setting back wooded areas to an earlier growth stage.

A brontosaurus has weight-distributing tracks, so it doesn’t compact or rut the ground or do as much damage to low-growing plants as a wheeled vehicle might. The brontosaurus can make a trail into an area, then reach out 30 feet on each side with its boom – which ends in a tooth-studded drum spinning at high speed – and reduce smaller standing trees to chips. Doing this work on top of snow cover in winter avoided harming turtles and other reptiles that hibernate underground. Also, birds and mammals weren’t breeding at that time.

Annual vegetation surveys track how plants respond to habitat management at Cranberry Mountain WMA.

The brontosaurus worked on two sites at Cranberry Mountain, one 4 acres and the other 9 acres. The machine removed enough trees so that the remaining forest canopy amounted to less than 20 percent coverage. “We chose this treatment method because there was very little timber value in the 4-acre stand, and because we wanted to minimize impacts to damp soils in the 9-acre area,” says Ted Kendziora, a habitat biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, who helped design the management project.

Says NYDEC biologist Nate Ermer, “We’re looking to create a two-tiered shrub layer through tree removal.” Low-bush and high-bush blueberry and other native shrubs will spread and grow back with renewed vigor, along with witch hazel (a shrubby tree) as well as dense shoots of red maples, oaks, and other larger trees. Non-native invasive shrubs provide food and habitat for wildlife on the WMA, and these were chewed down to get them to grow back more densely and to give the native shrubs on the site a chance to compete in the sunlight that can now make it down to ground level.

Cottontail Research

Amanda Cheeseman, a graduate student in the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, is researching the ecology of New England cottontails in the Hudson Valley, and Cranberry WMA is a key study site.

Cheeseman is looking at the species’ population, what kinds of habitat the rabbits use, and how they interact with predators and with eastern cottontails. (Eastern cottontails are not native to the area but were brought in during the twentieth century. In much of the region, eastern cottontails outnumber the native New England cottontails.)

Amanda Cheeseman and colleague with a live-trapped cottontail. Research at Cranberry Mountain WMA explores how rabbits use different habitats.

To get a base-line on the New England cottontail population at Cranberry Mountain WMA, Cheeseman has live-trapped and radio-collared New England cottontails and is monitoring them to see how they use the thick young trees and shrubs growing back on the managed areas. Her research indicates that coyotes and bobcats may be the main predators of cottontails in this area. Another graduate student, Emily Gavard, studies parasites and nutrition in New England cottontails.

While the habitat work at Cranberry Mountain was designed to help New England cottontails, it will also benefit many other kinds of wildlife. Wild turkeys will hide their nests in the new thick habitat. American woodcock, redstarts, catbirds, chestnut-sided warblers, eastern towhees, and yellow warblers are a few of the many birds that will nest and feed in the young forest. Box turtles and wood turtles will find abundant insects and fruits in the new habitat.

Visitors use an extensive trail system at Cranberry Mountain WMA for hiking, cross-country skiing, and hunting. Folks should see a much greater variety of wildlife following the recent habitat work.

Funding and Partners

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Wildlife Management Institute.

How to Visit

Cranberry Mountain WMA is east of New York Route 22. Two parking areas can be accessed from Stagecoach Road. For more information, contact NYSDEC biologist Nathan Ermer, 845-256-3047, nmermer@gw.dec.state.ny.us