Wildlife Habitat is the Top Priority

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- Hi, Sanford Smith here with Penn State Extension.

Today I'm joined by Paul Weiss.

He's the Chief Forester in the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

And we're gonna talk a little bit about wildlife habitat enhancement and improving habitat for wildlife on game lands, as well as forest lands that maybe private people own or other organizations own.

So Paul, can you tell us a little bit about what types of wildlife habitat enhancement the Game Commission does?

- So we try to improve habitat conditions at every stage of the forest development, from early-stage forest manipulation to improve habitat when you get to stem exclusion, all the way up to mature forest.

Our primary goal is to create as much diversity of habitat types and conditions that we possibly can, to accommodate as many different wildlife species in one area as we possibly can.

- Now Paul, you mentioned an expression, stem exclusion.

What are you talking about there?

- So, stem exclusion is that the forest starts to develop, you've gotten past that thick brushy stage when you tend to find a lot of wildlife living in there, because there's a lot of cover, a lot of food, a lot of structure.

And the trees start to develop, and they start to shade each other out.

And you get to the point where there's no undergrowth on the forest floor, there's no sunlight hitting the forest floor, because it's so dense.

That's stem exclusion, as they start to drop out.

That's when you start to lose a lot of your best wildlife characteristics.

- Paul, there's so many things I could ask you, but what are some of the issues that you're facing?

Because you're dealing with about 1.6 million acres, is it, or 1.7?

- A little over 1.5. - Over 1.5, okay, million acres across the state of Pennsylvania.

What are some of the issues that you think about, across the whole state, that are major problems or positive things?

- So one of the biggest problems we have right now, and it's always easier to start with the problems and then get to the positive, is invasive species are a giant problem in any type of habitat management.

Whether they're invasive plants, invasive diseases, or invasive insects, they tend to disrupt the natural habitat processes that we deal with.

They tend to either shade out or kill off some of the best wildlife species and conditions.

And then the wildlife of Pennsylvania suffer because of that.

You see some of the defoliation that's happening across the state right now, that'll lead to massive mortality, and that'll lead to forest conversion from oak-dominated forest to less habitat-friendly forest, dominated by birch and maple.

So those are some of the biggest problems we're dealing with right now.

I would say one of the biggest positives that we're dealing with right now is the fact that there has been a lot of movement towards the understanding of the forest as a habitat, as opposed to the marketing side, the business side, the timber side exclusively.

There's absolutely a place for the timber aspect within forestry, but the fact that you have the game land set aside, and it's set aside for one reason only, and it's habitat, and we get tremendous support from the hunting public and the general public to look at the forest as a habitat and not a commodity.

I think that's one of the biggest positives we have right now.

- Yeah, that's interesting.

So you're saying basically good forestry and wildlife habitat can be compatible.

They can go together.

- Absolutely, a lot of the strategies that we use in managing habitat are borrowed from traditional timber silviculture.

We just may use them in a different timeline.

We may put them in at different scales and areas like that.

We may enter into stands that normally wouldn't have any timber value, but it has tremendous wildlife value, and we try to improve it.

So absolutely, you can produce quality habitat and produce timber at the same time.

- Paul, I want to ask you a question about whitetail deer.

- Sure. - It's sometimes called the most controversial animal in Pennsylvania.

Can you talk a little bit about the challenges that the Game Commission faces in managing habitat for whitetail deer?

- So one of the biggest challenges we face as we're managing habitat for whitetail deer, is the whitetail deer tend to eat their own habitat.

So we have to try to find a balance where there's enough food in order to keep them a healthy, stable population, but they don't eat it to the dirt.

Pennsylvania has always been a little bit of a different state, just because our geography is split into so many different subtypes.

The northern part of Pennsylvania and southern part of Pennsylvania right now are diverged a little bit when it comes to the deer population.

We're struggling to manage habitat across the northern tier of the state for every other species, because the deer numbers are so impactful that we can't get anything to grow in the way that we need to, to produce habitat for snowshoe hares, Appalachian cottontails, rough grouse, black bears, things like that, because the deer are so impactful.

Now, in the southern part of the state, where you have a little more agriculture, a little more broken-up habitat, a little more diversification, the deer aren't nearly as much of a problem as they are across the north, and we're a little bit more successful in our habitat management.

But that being said, there are even localized areas in the south where the deer impacts are so heavy that we can't get that next growth of the next forest to come in.

- Yeah, that's interesting.

Paul, here's another broad question.

So lots of forest landowners tell us they own their property for wildlife, because they enjoy viewing it or they enjoy hunting, but it's wildlife that's one of their chief values.

But the funny thing is that very few of them ever do anything on their property to enhance it for wildlife.

In fact, sometimes they do negative things that degrade it for wildlife.

Do you have any thoughts about that, and even maybe suggestions as to the kind of help they might find or kinds of things they could do themselves?

- So yeah, it's an excellent point.

I started my career in private forestry, and you hear that a lot.

So what we're focusing on right now at the Game Commission is that outreach, clear on how we can take the habitat management that we do on game lands and scale it down to most private landowners, in order to give them tips and techniques that they can use on their own private woodlot, whether it's three acres or thirty acres or a hundred acres, and try to mimic some of the strategies that we use.

We're working on a publication right now highlighting some of these smaller scale projects that could be used to get out to the public's hands and to get into the hands of educational institutes to help with that.

We're doing more outreach with things like this, so we can get in front of them, and we're working a lot to increase our web presence and our information on the web, on how to manage for wildlife on a private basis.

- So thank you very much, Paul, for joining me today. - Sure.

And thank you, folks, for listening. - Thank you.