Newswise \u2014 North America has lost an estimated 3 billion birds since 1970\u2014a nearly 30% drop across species\u2014mostly due to habitat loss and degradation. So when a team of researchers repeated a bird population study they did 30 years earlier in a very large commercial forest landscape in Maine, they were stunned to find more birds than before. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we started this project, we expected to add to the pile of bad news,\u201d says Michael Reed<\/a>, a professor of biology in the School of Arts and Sciences<\/a> at Tufts University and co-author of the study. \u201cSo we were very pleasantly surprised to find that, for most of the bird species in our study, things were actually looking up.\u201d<\/p>\n The research team wanted to see if bird populations and habitat use had changed over the decades, particularly given a shifting forest landscape. \u201cForest management practices in Maine have changed significantly since the early 1990s,\u201d says Reed. Due to social pressure, clearcutting has become much less common in Maine. Today, most logging operations remove fewer trees per acre\u2014returning to spots every decade or so\u2014and spread their activity across a broader area<\/p>\n The study, published in Biological Conservation<\/a>, found that 26\u2014or more than half\u2014of 47 species counted by the researchers had significantly increased in numbers since the early 1990s, while populations for 13 species (or 28%) had remained stable. That\u2019s contrary to what happened across much of the continent, with the North American Breeding Bird Survey showing that 35\u2014or 75%\u2014of the same species analyzed had seen their numbers decline, both regionally and continentally, for the same timeframe.<\/p>\n But what makes the commercial forests of Maine so different from other forests in the northern Atlantic states and North America? And can we learn anything from them to bolster bird populations regionally and nationally?<\/p>\n \u201cNumerous factors are likely behind the abundance of bird populations we see in northcentral Maine,\u201d says Reed. \u201cWe can\u2019t know what they all are, but we know at least one: It\u2019s all forest up there.\u201d<\/p>\n The original and current study took place in a 588,000-acre commercial forest nestled within 10 million acres of commercial, public, and protected forest landscape. Together, these woodlands create the largest contiguous tract of non-developed forest east of the Mississippi. The habitat is recognized worldwide as an Important Bird Area, an area officially recognized as critical for protecting bird species and biodiversity by a coalition of international bird conservation groups.<\/p>\n The remote forestland is also one of the darkest places left on the East Coast. \u201cMost bird species migrate at night, orienting by the stars,\u201d says John Hagan, the study\u2019s senior author and the founder and president of Our Climate Common. \u201cSo it may be when birds flying at night get tired, they look down, spot a vast patch of darkness, and decide it\u2019s a good place to land and raise young.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of the bird species observed seemed more flexible in their habitat use than previously thought; the researchers have another paper on these findings in the works. This suggests that high-quality forest next to more average forest may still be appealing enough to attract and support more birds over time. Individual birds often return to breed where they were hatched, and many migratory species are drawn to areas where others of their kind are already present. As Reed puts it, this may mean that \u201cthe rich get richer\u201d when it comes to birds in Maine\u2019s commercial forests.<\/p>\n Much of the population growth came from more birds per acre, not more habitat. \u201cYou\u2019d expect bird numbers to go up if there\u2019s more habitat,\u201d says Reed. \u201cBut we actually saw increased numbers for some species whose main habitat acreage stayed the same size or even decreased from the 1990s. For example, in places where we previously counted two ovenbirds<\/a> singing before, we now counted four.\u201d<\/p>\n Data from one species\u2014the golden-crowned kinglet<\/a>\u2014suggests that how forests are managed may affect species\u2019 ability to thrive. These tiny, round songbirds are declining sharply across much of North America, including in the commercial forests of New Brunswick, Canada. But just over the border in Maine, their numbers are rising.<\/p>\n In Canada, commercial forests are commonly replanted in neat plantation-style rows, creating simpler forests, with less understory and trees that are all the same age. In contrast, Maine\u2019s commercial forests rely on natural regrowth, creating denser forests with a broader mix of tree species and ages. Reed and Hagan hypothesize this more natural approach may offer better shelter or support more of the insects that kinglets need to raise their young.<\/p>\n Despite the widespread increases, bird numbers for 14 species\u2014about 30%\u2014still declined in the study area. The researchers hope to more closely examine the pressures faced by these decreasing bird species, including species like the winter wren<\/a> and the Canada warbler<\/a>, to see if commercial forestry could do something differently to better support them. They are particularly worried about steep declines in mature trees\u2014some more than 200 years old\u2014and its impact on the bird populations. Hagan is now leading additional research to assess this conservation threat. The threat could be on their migration or overwintering grounds, in which case little can be done in Maine to improve their numbers.<\/p>\n Even though about two-thirds of U.S. forestland is available or used to produce industrial wood products, the research team believes theirs is the first bird survey to compare species population numbers in a commercial forest over a long period of time. And given the 521 million acres of commercial U.S. forestland, they hope it certainly will not be the last.<\/p>\n In the face of ongoing human habitat expansion and continental declines in bird populations, the team says it\u2019s important to understand how all types of forest ownership may help create important sanctuaries for birds. \u201cBirds also may be thriving in commercial forests in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, which are managed similarly to those in Maine,\u201d Hagan says. \u201cHopefully, someone will look to see.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMany people don\u2019t expect places where you harvest wood to serve as valuable habitat because they are cutting trees down,\u201d adds Reed. \u201cBut nobody thinks the goal of a farm is to cut down corn\u2014it\u2019s to grow it. And commercial forests grow trees.\u201d<\/p>\n _______<\/p>\n How to Help the Birds at Home<\/p>\n You may not own an acre of land\u2014never mind hundreds of acres\u2014but you can still bring some qualities of Maine forestland to your own yard.<\/p>\n Plant a tree that is native to your area<\/a>.Add native shrubs, which provide vital food and shelter for birds while offering multi-season visual appeal for you.\u201cLeave the leaves\u201d<\/a> in the parts of your yard where you are creating understory. Nature abhors a leaf blower\u2014and it means less yardwork and free mulch for you.Fight light pollution by reducing outdoor lighting<\/a> to what\u2019s truly necessary.Where safe to do so, leave dead trees standing<\/a>. \u201cSnags\u201d provide valuable habitat for owls, woodpeckers, and cavity-nesting birds.Replace part of your lawn with native plants. Check out Douglas Tallamy\u2019s book Nature\u2019s Best Hope for ideas.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newswise \u2014 North America has lost an estimated 3 billion birds since 1970\u2014a nearly 30% drop across species\u2014mostly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[6810,34939,17645,49,48,6812,4779,6808,66,34940,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-51225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-all-journal-news","9":"tag-birdbirdsforest-and-wildlife-ecologyforest-biodiversitytimber-productionmainebiodiversityconservationnaturewildlifewildlife-abundance","10":"tag-birds","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-environmental-science","14":"tag-nature","15":"tag-newswise","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-tufts-university","18":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}