Woodland Wisdom Part 3: Wildlife Habitat Enhancement

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- Hi, Sanford Smith here, with PennState Cooperative Extension.

And today I'm joined by my colleague...

- Calvin Norman.

- And we're gonna talk about wildlife habitat enhancement today.

Many times people ask us, or say to us, "I wanna improve my property for wildlife." And there's a lot of things to consider.

So let's talk about it.

Calvin, what would you say to someone?

- Well, saying this is one of the most common questions I get, and it's one of the most common reasons that folks own forests.

And the first thing that I ask folks when they tell me they want to manage for wildlife, is I say, "What wildlife do you want to manage for?" The term "wildlife" means every animal in the forest with a backbone.

So every, "vertebrate" is your big science word for the day there.

Now, different animals require different habitat.

For example, grouse like a young forest, or early successional forest.

Whereas bears kind of like a mix of forest.

Especially with some larger old dead trees.

So you, you know, if you're gonna manage for grouse you're gonna do something a little bit differently than you would if you would manage for black bears.

So that's why we need to define what we're thinking about, when we're thinking about wildlife.

- Yeah, that makes sense.

Sometimes people, I think, haven't even thought about it.

Which wildlife species they want, or maybe they're thinking of one species, but they neglect to remember they enjoy a lot of different species.

So, what if you only own a small piece of land, and there's a lot of property around you that might be a little different from your property?

What do you say then?

- Well, you know, being a little different from the property around you, is probably the best thing you can do.

So what you want to do as a landowner, is you want to, before you start managing for wildlife, take a look at the properties around you.

You can do that, you know, just walking around.

Or if you want to get on some kind of map that has a, you know, a satellite image, that's a great way to do it.

And see what's going on there.

You might see that you're just a little chunk of forest surrounded by cornfield.

In which case you're gonna manage a little bit differently than if you were surrounded by, you know, a thousand acres of state forest.

So you wanna see what's going on, and see how you can enhance the diversity of, you know, plant species and then also structure.

So, by "structure," we mean if you got big tall trees, or you got little trees, or maybe you have grassland.

We wanna kind of maximize diversity, if we're just going for wildlife broadly.

- Sometimes people say they need to get a little more water on their property, or maybe food sources on their property.

What can a person do about that?

- Well, it depends, really.

I'm gonna go back to our species.

You know, not all wildlife need water.

A lot of wildlife can get water from the things that they eat.

So, we think about what we're managing for.

And again, with the food sources, it really depends.

We have what we call hard mast and soft mast.

So, hard mast is like nuts.

Soft mast is berries and stuff And different species like a different mix of those things.

So, we gotta figure out what we want.

One of the best things you can do as a forest owner though, is to have a good diversity of species and age classes in your forest.

So, you got some big trees, you got some little trees.

You cover the spectrum of food sources.

- Okay. Sounds a little complicated.

Are there some sources of assistance for people, so they can get some help?

- Oh, it can get very complicated, which is why we have a lot of great sources, like you asked about.

We have the Pennsylvania Game Commission, who has tons of resources and folks who can help private landowners.

The DCNR has service foresters that help private landowners.

As well as us here at Cooperative Extension.

We have all kinds of knowledge about wildlife, and are real happy to help people.

- Right.

We have knowledge, we've got publications, and we even have programs.

Webinars, and face to face programs.

So thanks very much, Calvin.

I hope you folks learned a little bit about wildlife habitat enhancement today.

Thank you for listening.