Creating Wildlife Habitat on Our Woodlots

Bunny Habitat

By Robin Follette

Habitat. Without proper habitat, the wildlife we’d like to attract and keep won’t make our woodlot their home. Improving, creating, and maintaining habitat can be as simple as a stack of firewood or as complicated as a timber harvest that creates deer wintering yards. There are four key pieces to habitat – food, shelter, water, and space. Look for signs of wildlife in the area you’re going to create, improve or maintain. Make note of what’s available now and what’s missing.

The wildlife management plan for our 45-acre woodlot focuses on deer and partridge. Our deer herd struggled in nearly 200 inches of snow last winter. An enormous apple crop in the fall of 2014 fattened up many deer and likely made surviving the winter easier. We’ve been pruning old apple trees back into production, and releasing and pruning younger trees. Releasing trees involves clearing debris and trees that inhibit the target tree’s growth. We’ve planted American chestnut, plum, white oak and hazelnut with the deer in mind. The apple trees provide food now and the rest will produce a few years from now. I don’t expect to see chestnuts and acorns soon but it’s nice to know that they’ll be here for a very long time. The fruit trees fill our pantry as well as feed the wildlife. We’ll harvest what we need and leave the rest.

We have enough hardwood trees for ruffed grouse to bud in over the winter and into spring. We planned to fell a few trees to create drumming logs but a strong storm last July did the work for us. There are more than the recommended one or two logs per acre now. I hear drumming this year. If you find a fallen tree that will make a nice drumming log, you can improve it by trimming branches. If you’re choosing a tree, you’ll want one that is at least 12 inches in diameter and eight to 14 feet long. Drumming logs should be at the edge of clearings.

Water can be the most difficult or easiest part of habitat. My woodlot is wet, full of natural springs and seasonal streams. We were able to develop a natural spring that stays open most winters. A bobcat wore a trail through deep snow and drank almost daily. If you don’t have a natural water supply, you can create an artificial one. A five-gallon bucket will drain in one day if it drips about once a second. Place a shallow pan underneath to collect water.

Cottontails and snowshoe hares benefit from brush piles. You can build a simple but long-term pile by stacking four-foot logs in a square pile, three logs per layer. Alternate the direction. Layer until the base is three feet tall, then cover with brush. Refresh the brush each year.

When we talk about food plots we think of deer first. They’re a great source of carbohydrates and protein for deer but they can also feed bear, moose, grouse, and turkeys. I watched an ermine hunting in a food plot from a tree stand. It caught meadow voles and kept me entertained on a cold November day.

Let’s get kids involved! A pile of rocks can be shelter and a warming spot for snakes, and a log pile is home to salamanders. These piles don’t have to be large. A two-foot wide and tall stack of either is plenty, and it’s manageable work for even young children. The sooner we teach children to enjoy snakes and amphibians the less likely they are to harm them later. Providing sturdy work clothes and gloves keeps them safe and creates the feeling of serious work. We can lead our youngsters toward conservation at a young age.

Robin Follette is an outdoors writer from Talmadge. She enjoys kayaking, camping, hunting, fishing and wild harvesting. Her website is http://robinfollette.com