Southern Research Station Headquarters - Asheville, NC
![[Images] Five photos of different landscape](/images/imstr1.jpg "[Images] Five photos of different landscape")
Issue 16
The Good News
by Zoë Hoyle
Research doesn’t have to be adversely affected by changes in land ownership. Take, for example, the long-term experiments SRS research wildlife biologist Paul Hamel has established on forest industry land to look at whether silviculture can be used to improve habitat for cerulean warblers.
The cerulean warbler, so named for the male’s vivid sky-blue plumage, is a neotropical migratory songbird. The small bird breeds in the upper canopies of forests in the Eastern United States, flying south every August to winter on the slopes of the Andes in South America. Since 1966, numbers of cerulean warblers have declined an estimated 70 percent due to loss of habitat in both the species’ breeding and winter ranges.
Hamel, based at the SRS Center for Bottomland Hardwoods in Stoneville, MS, has studied cerulean warblers for well over two decades. In the early 1990s, he began scoping out sites along the Mississippi River known to harbor the species. He wanted to understand why the bird had declined so much in this part of its traditional breeding range.
Staten and Bob Ford, then working with the University of Memphis, found cerulean warblers on the site in Desha County in the early 1990s, when there was growing interest in the decline in neotropical migratory bird species. Ford served as the first contact for cerulean warbler research with Anderson-Tully.
In 1992, SRS researcher Winston Smith, University of Georgia’s Bob Cooper (then at the University of Memphis), and Ford (these days with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Memphis) established plots to study the status of neotropical migratory birds on three sites in the Mississippi River floodplain, one on the site in Desha County owned by Anderson-Tully, a second on state-owned land in Tennessee, and a third on a national wildlife refuge. Hamel, then employed by the State of Tennessee, served as an advisor and cooperator on the project; he became more central to the project when he was hired to work for SRS in 1993.
Researchers still go back to the plots every year to monitor not only the territories of cerulean warblers, but also American redstarts, northern parulas, yellow-throated warblers, and other neotropical migratory songbirds.
Cutting for Ceruleans
Of the three plots, the timber industry site is the only one where experiments have been done on managing forests specifically for cerulean warblers. At the beginning of the experiment, the researchers worked with Anderson-Tully to reserve the 135-acre plot from any forest management for 10 years. In 1994, when an ice storm hit the forest in Desha County, Anderson-Tully held back salvage operations until researchers could get their decade of data from the plot.
"It was at that point that the company became interested in managing to promote habitat for cerulean warblers and other neotropical migratory songbirds,” says Hamel. “I trained their staff, who put in the silvicultural prescriptions and became active participants in gathering and publishing the data that came from the work."
The experimental plot was divided in half. The timber company did their usual cut on one-half of the plot, basically reducing the overstory and taking out most of the midstory. On the other half, they left more of the midstory as habitat for cerulean warblers. Hamel and fellow researchers have observed that the cerulean warblers use the side of the plot treated for them but not the other side, which was treated to increase production by improving species composition and spacing.
Hamel stresses that this particular experiment has not been replicated. However, results from a larger project conducted by university researchers on multiple sites across cerulean warbler breeding range align with what Hamel’s seen on his Desha County plot. The good news is that cerulean warblers show some flexibility in habitat, and will move into areas disturbed by silviculture.
"The question now is whether we keep applying standard cuts and measuring the response of cerulean warblers, or do we come up with a specific cerulean warbler prescription,” says Hamel. “The work with Anderson-Tully, their willingness to try managing their forest to provide habitat specifically for the cerulean warbler, allows research the latitude to try to answer this question."
Painless Transition
In 2005, Anderson-Tully merged with The Forestland Group, LLC, an independent timberland management investment organization (TIMO) headquartered in Chapel Hill, NC. The Forestland Group manages approximately 3.4 million acres in 20 U.S. states as well as Belize, Canada, and Costa Rica; emphasizes naturally regenerating hardwood forests; and manages its portfolios as a Certified Resource Manager under the Forest Stewardship Council guidelines.
"There’ve been no changes in cooperation since the merger," says Hamel. "It’s really about people like Mike Staten who continue to work in the same capacity, and the relationship between Anderson-Tully and The Forestland Group. In my opinion, the cooperation we’ve had with Anderson-Tully and Mike Staten is exemplary."
For more information:
Paul Hamel at 662–686–3167 or phamel@fs.fed.us
