Managing for the Birds at the Catamount Community Forest

January, 2021

Context.

The Catamount Community Forest (CCF) is a 393-acre parcel in the Town of Williston, Vermont.

This parcel was acquired by the Town of Williston in 2019 with assistance from the Trust for Public Land, the US Forest Service, the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and others. 

The parcel is a beautiful and diverse block of conserved forestland on the edge of the increasing fragmented and developed Champlain Valley.

A diverse group of community members and partners helped draft a "Management Plan" (MP) for the parcel in 2018.

This document details broad goals, objectives and rules for the parcel.

The Chittenden County Forester and the Catamount Community Forest Committee created a "Forest Management Plan" (FMP) for the parcel, which was adopted by the Town in 2020.

This FMP added data and management "prescriptions" to the MP, including some exciting partnerships and projects.

The first project planned in the CCF's FMP was some wildlife habitat management.

This project is a partnership between the Chittenden County Forester ( VT Dept. of Forests, Parks and Recreation ),  US Fish and Wildlife Service  (USFWS),  Audubon Vermont  and the  VT Dept. of Fish and Wildlife  and funded by USFWS.


Photo: VT Dept. of Fish and Wildlife

Goals and Objectives

The main goal of the work was to create " early successional " or " young forest " habitat. This is the habitat type created as forests recover from a large-scale "disturbance," like a wind storm.

Large disturbances in the woods create opportunities for an incredible diversity of tree and plant species to grow, especially light-loving "intolerant" tree species like aspens/poplars, white birch and pin cherry.

While a big disturbance, whether natural or human-created, may seem devastating, scary, or sad, the diverse and abundant regeneration that ensues provides unique habitat opportunities for many different species of wildlife.

While this project at the CCF is focused on providing habitat for birds, early successional habitat is also used by everything from black bears, who visit these areas to eat raspberries and blackberries, to rabbits and hares who use the dense regeneration as protective cover.

At the same time that we're creating early successional habitat, we are also trying to enhance "shrubland" habitat. Shrublands support the golden-winged warbler, a bird species of concern in Vermont and a particular focus of Audubon Vermont's conservation efforts. The golden-winged warbler is considered an "at-risk" species, meaning that while they are not currently federally threatened or endangered, they are at risk of becoming so.

Learn more about Audubon Vermont's efforts to protect and create habitat for the golden-winged warbler  here .


Photo: Audubon VT

For some more discussion of this project, and some cool photos and videos, check out the attached 7-minute video with Ethan Tapper and Katie Kain, of US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).

You can also check out the recording of a webinar that Katie, Mark LaBarr of Audubon Vermont, Andrea Shortsleeve of Vermont Fish and Wildlife and Ethan did about this project in Spring 2020.

You can watch the recording of that webinar  here .

Getting the job done.

We used a machine called a "brontosaurus", which has a heavy-duty grinder head mounted on an excavator body. This machine grinds trees and shrubs into chips, with all material staying on-site.

One of the benefits of this method is that the carbon and ecological/wildlife benefits of that dead wood are kept on site!

Messy is Good!

If you go out to the project area, you'll see that it looks really "messy," with tall "snags" (dead standing trees), dead trees and parts of trees lying on the ground, and scattered trees that were left standing.

In "shrubby" areas the "bronto" was selective, grinding non-native shrubs like honeysuckle and buckthorn and leaving native shrubs like greystem dogwood and nannyberry, helping us create a "mosaic" of different habitat types and conditions.

While it looks "messy," this "complexity" is incredibly important for a wide range of wildlife species, and for forest ecology.

The project area.

The work was done in two areas of the portion of the CCF mapped as "Stand 5" in the FMP; a 5-acre patch and a 1-acre patch, shown as the bright green areas on the attached map.

The project area is comprised of fields that recently reverted to forest, and areas of Christmas tree plantations that were planted in the 1980's.

While some of these Christmas tree plantations did well, like the balsam firs on the left side of this image, others fared much more poorly. This was especially true for Scots pine, a European pine species. In the picture here you can see the rectangular area that was once planted with Scots pine. When these trees declined, the area filled with native and non-native shrubs and with herbaceous species like Joe-pye weed and goldenrod.

While the area shown here was lucky to have mostly native shrubs, other areas were densely infested with common buckthorn, a non-native invasive plant species. Some of these areas had as many as 40,000 - 50,000 buckthorn plants per acre.

The outlook.

While for a couple years some parts of the project area might look strange, soon our native tree and plant communities will start to regenerate and thrive.

Already some areas have begun to respond -- check out this picture of one the project area in January of 2021...

... And this picture taken from the same place in August 2021.

One of the most amazing things about forests is their ability to respond to disturbances with resilience and richness.

The way that the forest responds to the disturbance that we've created at the Catamount Community Forest is much more than a bi-product of this work -- the response itself is what creates amazing habitat for so many wildlife species.

Forests are dynamic systems, always changing, and within these systems death, change and regeneration are a celebration; helping make the forest more diverse, complex, and resilient, and providing a greater abundance of habitat opportunities for wildlife.

Invasives.

Another major goal of this work is to address major infestations of invasive exotic plants at the CCF.

We began invasive plant control in the management area in fall 2021, and plan on re-visiting the area to control invasives in coming years.

Some of Williston's amazing volunteers have also been leading work days to control invasives throughout the CCF.


Photo: Sue Morse

Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change

The next project planned for the CCF is some forest management in the northwest of the parcel, which will occur as soon as autumn 2021. This will be a collaboration with UVM to improve understanding of how to manage forests in a changing climate, part of a project called  Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change .

Dr. Tony D'Amato and Ethan Tapper led a webinar focused on this project in spring 2020. You can watch a recording of this webinar  here .

To learn more about forests and forest management, check out Ethan's  LinkTree .

Sign up for the Chittenden County Forester's email list,  here .

You can also check out the Chittenden County Forester's library of webinars and videos on related topics on  YouTube .

If you have any questions about this project, email: