BY DR. DAVE SAMUEL
Although this virus has turned our world upside down, coronavirus doesn’t impact the health of migratory songbirds at all. At least I don’t think it does. Anyway, my two top bird advisors in the area, if not the state, Katie Fallon and LeJay Graffious, have made me aware of the plight of two migratory warblers.
The golden-winged warbler is not all that common in West Virginia, but our state is still very important for this neat little bird. Golden-winged warblers can be found in early successional habitat above 3,000 feet in our mountains. Early successional habitat is not common at those elevations, so the golden-winged warbler is not common, either. However, the higher elevation areas in Randolph and Pocahontas counties that are lightly grazed have the mixture of grasses, blackberries, goldenrod, pokeweed, brushy patches and scattered trees that these birds use as breeding areas. Timber cuts will provide needed habitat. Areas where farms have been abandoned, or forested areas damaged from major storms, provide that early succession habitat, as well. Bottom line, we don’t have a lot of that anywhere.
Kyle Aldinger and Petra Wood with the West Virginia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit at WVU conducted some major research that enhanced our knowledge of what these warblers need. This was especially important since the golden-winged has seen a 97% population decline since the 1960s. Clearly, without some intervention, these beautiful birds will disappear.
Fortunately, there is a new partnership between the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, called Working Lands For Wildlife. (You may remember the NRCS as the Soil Conservation Service.) This Partnership was created to stop the decline of seven wildlife species. One of those is the golden-winged warbler. They selected the golden-winged for this project in West Virginia.
As I mentioned, this bird needs shrubby early successional habitats for breeding. You can find such areas in alder swamps that have been harvested for timber, forest clear-cuts, and utility right-of-ways. Timber cutting is great for this bird, but the problem is around 15 years after the cut, that early successional habitat starts to disappear. Clearly, some management is needed. The partnership works with farmers, forest managers and others, to restore this habitat and at the same time, allow the land owners and managers to be able to use the lands productively.
The federal Farm Bill provides experts and finances to enhance productivity of cooperator lands and at the same time, habitat for the warbler. It’s a great win-win for all involved, including this great little warbler.
The cerulean warbler suffered major declines from loss of breeding habitat, as well as loss of wintering habitat in South America. They breed in mature deciduous forests and we have a lot of that in West Virginia. As such our state has the highest density of cerulean warblers anywhere in its breeding range.
In 2011, Katie Fallon, one of the founders of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia here in Morgantown, wrote a great, award-winning book, Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search For A Vanishing Species. In this book, Katie notes that we’ve lost 80% of all Ceruleans since the 1960s. Sounds like the golden-winged warbler, doesn’t it? It’s a great read, so Google it and get a copy.
There are several factors that are contributing to the decline of the cerulean warbler. Among these are loss of habitat on the species’ breeding grounds here and wintering grounds in South America. The loss is caused by many things including logging, agricultural clearing, loss of habitat on important migratory stopover locations, and habitat fragmentation of existing contiguous forest. Also, changes in forestry practices allowing for shorter stand rotation and even-aged stand management eliminate the large tall trees that cerulean warblers require, thus limiting potential habitat.
Just as with the golden-winged warbler, a partnership is helping this bird. The National Wild Turkey Federation, the NRCS, the West Virginia Division of Forestry and the Appalachian Mountains Joint Venture are working on the Cerulean Warbler Forest Enhancement project. That project is funded from money provided by the 2014 Farm Bill. Over the last five years, funds were used to enhance 4,000 forested acres and reclaim 75 mined sites on private lands here in West Virginia.
The neat thing about managing our forests for Cerulean warblers is the fact that such management also helps other wildlife such as ruffed grouse, wild turkeys, and deer.
The partnerships to help these two warblers are much larger than space permits me to cover here. All Appalachian Mountain states are involved, partnering with universities, federal and state agencies and conservation organizations such as the Wild Turkey Federation. We’re talking hundreds of trained personnel, all cooperating to get the needed money, and implement the plans they created for various species. I can’t say enough about how important these partnerships are.
There you go, an 800-word column in the Sunday paper and I only used the word coronavirus once. Yes, this column was for the birds. I call that progress.
Dr. Samuel is a retired wildlife professor from West Virginia University. His outdoor columns have appeared, and continue to appear, in Bowhunter magazine and the Whitetail Journal. If you have questions or comments on wildlife and conservation issues, email him at drdave4@comcast.net.
