A well-managed woodland can promote wildlife diversity and forest health. Woodland owners
have several tools available to them to achieve these objectives on their properties.
Two of the more common techniques that we use are single tree selection and patch cut harvesting.
Used together over the long term, these are often termed uneven age forest management because what
they do is create trees of multiple generations or basically different age trees within the same
woodland. So in today's video, we're going to talk a little bit about what these two techniques are,
what trees they help grow, and how wildlife species respond to them.
With single tree selection, we're doing just that. We're removing single trees throughout the forest,
and what that does is it creates more growing space for the surrounding canopy trees.
This often results in increased vigor and health of those trees. So basically when we
remove a tree like this, we're creating a small canopy gap, and what happens is
we'll get a temporary growth of young trees and other, other plants within that gap,
and these conditions used over time really favors a certain species, and so more shade tolerant
tree species like American beech or sugar maple are really favored using single tree selection.
So with single tree selection, you have to decide which trees you're going to remove.
It's really not always the biggest trees that are removed. There's a number of factors that
go into that just like any other management technique. So it's really based on what your
management objectives are, what the current stand conditions are, the site conditions
as well as tree biology. So a lot of woodland owners will seek the assistance of a professional
forester who can take the guesswork out of this, and so they'll decide which trees to remove that
results in the best condition for your woodland. So with single tree selection, there's advantages
and disadvantages. Since we're removing very little of the tree canopy, there's actually very
low visual impact with single tree selection. In fact, you can walk in a lot of woodlands that have
had that done and not even realize that there was a harvest done recently. Another advantage with
single tree selection is you get to decide which trees stay and which trees go, and that can have a
lot of benefits not only from a timber standpoint but really from a wildlife management standpoint.
There's also species of wildlife that are adapted to the structure
that you create by using single tree selection. So a good example of that is a cerulean warbler.
It's a state endangered species. It's a little songbird that nests really high up in the canopy,
but what research has found is that they really prefer to nest
in oak trees and especially white oak trees that are adjacent to small canopy gaps.
So while single tree selection has a lower visual impact than other methods because you're removing
trees from a larger area, you have to move logging equipment over that area, and so you can actually
have a greater impact in terms of soil disturbance and road creation than you would with regeneration
openings and patch cuts where you're removing more timber in a more confined area.
Another tool woodland owners have available to them is a patch cut, and with a patch cut, what essentially
we're doing is removing all the overstory trees in an area the size of about a half acre up to about
three acres in size, and with this technique, we're basically mimicking a natural disturbance
event. So what this allows, it allows our shade intolerant species like some of our oak species,
cherry, and tulip to have a better chance of growing and competing with other trees,
and so when you remove all those overstory trees, you have a lot of sunlight, and for the first few
years, you have a lot of trees growing in that area at a density exceeding sometimes thousands
of trees per acre, but over time those trees tend to die out and they self thin, but a good general
rule of thumb when you're doing patch cuts is the diameter of the cut needs to be at least one to
two times the height of the surrounding canopy, and what this allows is you have a large enough
core area in the center of that cut to get full sunlight for the majority of the time. In the
surrounding perimeter of that cut even though you don't have any overstory trees above it,
you still get enough shade where it actually promotes the more shade tolerant species like your
beech and your maple. In terms of deciding between patch cuts and single tree and other methods, it's
all the same in terms of the factors you consider. So it comes down to your management objectives,
species biology, the site conditions, and those will really dictate what you're going to do and where.
So when you create a patch cut, you actually create a good wildlife habitat,
and so that dense growth of young trees and shrubs and wildflowers that you get
has positive effects on different wildlife species, and really over the first 15 to 20 years,
these patch cuts change a lot in terms of vegetation structure and composition,
and you'll get different wildlife species responding to those over time,
but certainly a typical patch cut, you'll have white-tailed deer using these areas for food
because they feed on the stems of the twigs of young trees. You'll have eastern cottontail
rabbit, wild turkey utilizing them for food and cover, and you even have forest bats that
will come sometimes travel quite a distance away to feed in these patch cuts for insects.
Normally we associate some species as having mature forest habitat and young forest habitat,
but a lot of species require both, and so even some of our mature forest breeding songbirds
like scarlet tanninger and ovenbird, once their young fledged the nest, they'll often take them
to areas like patch cuts and regeneration openings to feed. Most people would call a two to three
acre patch cut really big, but there's actually species of wildlife that need even bigger areas.
So some of our birds, for example yellow-breasted chat, which is a song bird,
rough grouse, these species that are of conservation concern actually need bigger
areas, and so in this case we would prescribe a regeneration opening which would create areas of
even 10 acres or larger that some of these species need.
Our sun-loving tree species regenerate
naturally within these patch cuts, but we can't always predict which ones are going to come up.
So in cases where landowners think that desired species like oaks and black walnuts
are unlikely to regenerate naturally, sometimes they'll choose to do supplemental plantings within
these patch cuts. In terms of the different timber harvesting techniques, there's no one approach.
One technique is not better than the other. They simply result in different conditions,
and you're going to have different plant and animal species respond to those conditions.
Ideally, you'd want to use a variety of these techniques
to enhance wildlife diversity and tree species and diversity on your property.
Larger woodland owners, you're going to have more flexibility in terms of what you can do
but timber harvesting can still be an important forest management technique for smaller wood lots.
Always seek the advice of a professional forester
who can help you determine which harvest technique is right for you.
To find a forester or other resources, see the web links in the video description below.