More than once, a dyed-in-the-plaid-wool-hunting-jacket old-timer has reminisced to me about legendary game bird and deer hunting opportunities of their youth in 1940s and '50s New Hampshire. And then, just as often, wistfully lamented: “Those woods have all grown up now and there's no hunting like THAT anymore.”
Ruffed grouse, American woodcock, golden-winged warblers and numerous other wildlife species require regenerating forest stands that develop following timber harvests and other forest-management activities. The Ruffed Grouse Society and its sister organization the American Woodcock Society are providing $80,340 through the Wisconsin Drummer Fund to 15 projects in Wisconsin that will enhance young forest wildlife habitat and increase hunter access to prime hunting areas.
The state’s budget for helping to save vanishing species and their habitats would increase from about $1 million a year to $13 million if a proposal by a national blue-ribbon panel is adopted by Congress and signed into law by the President.
Over the last 100 years, as shrublands and young forests across the Northeast have been cleared for development or have grown into mature forests, populations of more than 65 songbirds, mammals, reptiles, pollinators and other wildlife that depend on this type of habitat have fallen alarmingly.
By Mark Nale for the Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.
The distant rumbling of small gasoline engines could be heard as I exited my pickup in the wooded parking lot just off of Red Rose Road. The man-made noise contrasted with the soft tranquility of Shavers Creek, flowing nearby. The Penn State Experimental Forest in Stone Valley is home to the Woodcock Trail, and I was there to meet with volunteers working to infuse new life into the once-popular walking path.
By Kristen Pakonis, for the Parsippany NJ Daily Record
On a Sunday morning in August, we stood knee deep in a sea of goldenrod, raspberries, grasses and sedges, on the edge of a young forest in the Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area.
A significant young forest restoration project continues to expand on the 25,000-acre Clermont Tract in northern Pennsylvania’s McKean County. With guidance from the Wildlife Management Institute and funding from the Wildlife For Everyone Endowment Foundation, conservationists planted 12,400 seedlings in 2015, the project's sixth year. The planting is part of an ongoing effort to improve wildlife habitat and to monitor wildlife populations, including the American woodcock and other young forest species.
Birds stopping for a break during their grueling migratory flights face a difficult tradeoff: They need to fuel up with food as efficiently as possible, but they need to avoid predators while they do it. To learn more about how they make these choices about food availability and predator risk, Jennifer McCabe and Brian Olsen of the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute spent two years capturing birds during fall migration along the coast of Maine.
DOVER, New Hampshire — Public and private conservation efforts have helped the New England cottontail rebound to the point where it can be taken off the list of species under consideration for protection, the federal government said Friday.
