More Habitat Diversity = More Wildlife

These past few weeks we have been starting to implement a forest management plan that I developed for a landowner last year. His goals were to improve the timber and improve deer and turkey habitat. WE CAN HELP!

He started off with a several hundred acre block of trees that were in varying degree of health and quality depending on topography and past land use. We took detailed inventory of the whole property and then broke up the land on paper planning to:

Increase Forest Health and productivity where good growth could be supported by identifying timber stands and performing a combination of TSI and Crop Tree Release on the stands to improve timber growth and wildlife habitat.
Increase Wildlife Habitat in areas where forest productivity is poor by managing them as Open Woodlands by thinning them to let light to the woodland floor, and then implementing Prescribed Fire to stimulate and increase green vegetation and tender woody sprouts.
Increase Habitat Edge by creating habitat transitions between certain management stands using Edge Feathering to increase habitat diversity.
Increase Wildlife Food Production and Water Availability with food plots and strategically placed water sources

Today, I want to focus on what TSI and Edge Feathering looks like on the ground.

In ecology, Edge Effects are changes in community structures that occur at the boundary of two or more habitats.

In this segment of the overall plan map for the property you will see how the habitat was laid out with forest stands, edge feathering in red, food plots in green, water holes in blue, and open woodland/prescribed fire stands in orange. **Photo Direction** is for orienting the edge feathering photos.

In this photo you see how we make the transition from a continuous block of trees into 3 distinct but very complimentary habitat types. To the left is the boundary between forest stand 17 and 18 marked by the reference tree pointed by the red arrow. Stand 16 to the right of the installed fireline trail (orange line) will become an Open Woodland habitat.

In this photo you see the edge feathering completed, and creates a distinct habitat type and creates a transition between the Forest Habitat to the far left (see pic below) and the future Open Woodland habitat to the right.

This picture is what TSI looks like in stand 18, where we cut poorly formed, poorly growing, or undesirable species to make room for good quality trees to grow to their maximum potential. This makes for a productive healthy forest and good wildlife habitat.

July 18, 2018July 18, 2018

Old trees arn’t always big! (maximizing growing space)

I’ve heard the way to manage timber is to “cut the big old trees and leave the small young trees to grow into big old trees and then do it all over again in about 10 to 20 years or so”.

That method of tending the forest sounds intuitive enough and quite good and reasonable, but unfortunately in our oak and pine forest systems, its just not that simple, and quite frankly, slowly degrades forest production and quality.

In a generally even aged forest (for which most of the central hardwood forest is comprised) its important to understand first, how these 4 concepts below interact:

How trees grow
Shade tolerance
How trees interact with each other
Tree age

How trees grow – Trees are like factories, where production is dependent on how many workers (leaves) can gather sunlight, convert carbon, and store it in the warehouse (trunk or stem) as wood.

Shade tolerance – Not all trees respond to light and shade the same way throughout their lifespan.

How trees interact with each other – If a tree doesn’t have enough light it will either not grow at all and die, or it will grow slowly and with poor form.

Tree age – Certain species of trees will only live to a certain age range, and must interact with other trees to gain a competitive advantage to become a large productive tree.

If two or more trees start as seedlings with plenty of light, generally a few of those trees gain advantages by either genetic superiority or a localized patch of good soil to get started. Once those few trees gain the advantage, the advantage carries with them through most of their growth and life.

More sunlight means more workers (leaves) to invest in, and therefore bigger roots, more branches to support more leaves, more height, more sunlight to catch, and the process gains traction from there into a big dominant tree.

The trees that don’t gain the competitive advantage early, fall further and further behind and go into survival mode, which means they only invest in enough leaves and growth for the limited light it receives under the shadow of the bigger trees.

For these suppressed trees, this means less branches, smaller root systems, and ultimately a smaller stem. These trees do this and ride it out until they don’t get enough sunlight at all and die, or until they reach the end of their lifespan (maturity) and then die. Often times, these suppressed trees are mistaken for younger trees, and its assumed that if given room to grow, they will grow into a big old tree.

Lets look at a live example:

Note: This vertical panoramic picture exaggerates how bent over the tree looks. Its actually a fairly straight tree.

If a black oak tree can only live 90 – 100 or so years on a fair growing site, then both of these trees only have 10 to 20 years left to occupy the growing space.

There are many factors to discuss here, and many of them to long winded for a blog post, as if this post wasn’t already long winded enough. But a few take home points from all this information would be:

Don’t assume a small tree is a young tree, and it will grow big if you cut the big tree next to it. Often times, it wont!
Evaluate which trees to cut in a stand based on their ability to provide the most return and value for you and wildlife in that limited growing space for the long haul.
In an oak forest, don’t let suppressed trees get to old or die before they are cut. Oak trees can sprout from a cut stump using the existing root system and will contribute as a future tree in the forest. If a tree dies, the root system dies with it. Use that process to your advantage.
Use a trained forester with experience to help you manage your timber. It pays now and into the future!

October 13, 2016October 17, 2016

White Oak acorns are falling !

In central Howell County the other day, I noticed the beginnings of fresh white oak acorns hitting the ground. This is an important event because white oak acorns are among the favored of forest foods for many. White oak acorns are preferred over many of the others because they have less tannins. Tannin is a chemical compound that is both an astringent and also binds and reacts with proteins making them unusable to many animals. If you’ve ever eaten a persimmon that wasn’t quite ripe, you’ve experienced the effect of tannins, The astringency makes your mouth pucker and the tannins bind with the proteins in your mouth and make it feel gritty or like sandpaper. Not a fun experience! Tannins have a bitter flavor. Since white oak acorns are low in tannins, to animals, they simply tastes better than other acorns.
So what does white oak acorns falling mean for us?
For me, it means that I better be thinking about that deer stand I placed near that stand of sentinel white oaks. When the acorns start to fall, deer come to gorge themselves on the tasty energy filled nuts. If your timber stand is healthy and managed properly, it will produce more of these tasty morsels.

Good management = healthy woods = healthy animals = happy hunter.
From a livestock perspective, for years, pigs have been fattened on acorns in the fall, producing a wonderful flavor in pork. Anyone that has tasted pork that has been naturally pasture raised, and acorn fattened under careful management, will notice the difference. Folks like myself that see value in providing an environment for both wildlife and livestock that enables them to express their created nature see no problem in letting a pig rummage the woods for a time. I specify and urge careful management, because pigs not managed wisely keeping in mind stocking density and rotation frequency can be destructive to the woods and fields. Careful management is important for all animals. In the eastern hardwoods, high deer densities over graze acorns and eat oak sprouts, heavily affecting oak regeneration, and in places, oaks are being replaced by less valuable trees.
Foresters understand that an important and effective approach to managing forests is to choose strategies that resemble natural processes. I think the same approach to farming and raising livestock is good and wise as well. So, if you are like me and also like to manage wildlife populations according to a natural process, then grab your bow and get busy climbing a tree near that stand of big healthy white oaks with a fresh carpet of acorns.