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This commentary is by Rick Enser, a biodiversity specialist who served as Coordinator of the Rhode Island Natural Heritage Program for 28 years. He is currently the Principal Conservation Biologist with the Conservation Cooperative, providing consulting services to government agencies and NGOs on biodiversity assessment and conservation planning.
The recent approval of the Telephone Gap IRP, the 11,000-acre logging project slated for one of Vermont’s largest and oldest tracts of unprotected forest, was applauded in the media by Jamey Fidel, General Counsel and Forest and Wildlife Program Director of the Vermont Natural Resource Council.
According to Fidel, “close to half the overall acreage that will be treated will be trying out some different approaches, many of them that have a lighter touch on the land, that are designed to have more of a beneficial carbon outcome, to be bird-friendly, and also to enhance old forest conditions through harvesting.”
All dubious claims, but the most nonsensical is the suggestion that tree harvesting can be a “bird-friendly” endeavor. In fact, this phrase implies that some birds, in this case forest species, deserve to be reduced at Telephone Gap in order to provide for other birds that prefer unforested conditions.
The concept of “bird-friendly management” has its origins with the Audubon Society whose mission of protecting birds has led to all manner of private landowner assistance in fostering “bird-friendly habitat,” even in the face of a changing climate.
A 2019 article posted on Vermont Audubon’s web page, ridiculously titled “Birds are Telling Us It’s Time to Take Action on Climate,” claims that “we already know what we need to do to help the birds we love.” Among the six suggestions for “what you can do to help in Vermont” is to “plant native trees, shrubs and flowers to create bird-friendly places at your home, school, or place of work.”
Audubon’s intent here is to suggest that homeowners can replace their decidedly bird-unfriendly and climate-unfriendly mowed lawns and sterile landscaping with a diversity of native plantings to support a greater diversity of birds. Unfortunately, this rationale has been corrupted by the suggestion that forest ecosystems that already support native biodiversity should be managed to be more “bird-friendly”.
The 2012 publication “Managing Your Woods With Birds in Mind: A Vermont Landowner’s Guide,” published by Audubon Vermont and Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation, poses the question, “What does a bird-friendly forest look like?”
The answer: “We envision healthy forests that provide suitable breeding and post-breeding habitat conditions for a suite of Vermont birds and sustained yields of timber and other forest products and services.” As such, “bird-friendly” becomes a selective process in which foresters conduct prescriptive management to support those birds desired by the landowner. It is suggested that landowners provide a variety of habitats and ages, including unforested early successional habitats to attract woodcock, a decidedly “unfriendly” choice for true forest birds.
Managing private forest lands with birds in mind may be an acceptable practice considering more destructive alternatives, such as clear-cutting large tracts of forest to maximize profits. But it is not acceptable on public lands where proforestation should be practiced to properly address the climate and biodiversity crises. That is the appropriate choice for the people’s forests.
Describing the Telephone Gap project as “bird-friendly” is nothing more than a ploy to enlist support from the thousands of people who simply “love birds,” especially those whose experience with Nature is mostly with the birds that visit their backyard feeders. They support the billion-dollar bird-feeding industry and the organizations that promise to protect the birds they love, but they rarely venture to wild places like Telephone Gap.
According to the environmental assessment prepared for Telephone Gap, the birds that will benefit from the proposed harvest treatments include, “many passerines such as the eastern bluebird, common yellow-throat, song sparrow, and American goldfinch,” all familiar backyard birds. The Forest Service provides zero information about the mature forest species that will be depleted by these misguided efforts to provide habitat for common birds that simply do not belong in mature forest ecosystems.
But then again, that’s not really the goal, is it? The real intent is to log, baby, log, and the Forest Service and its sycophants have employed all manner of disinformation to justify these actions. “A lighter touch on the land”; “bird-friendly”; “enhancing old forest through harvesting.”
Nothing more than greenwashing — and a carefully crafted, highly unethical scam.
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