Introduction

The Adirondack mountain range has a long history of logging.  Heavy logging of mature coniferous stands throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries opened up the canopy and allowed for extensive hardwood regeneration.  More recently (since the 1920s), high grading of hardwood tracts left vast areas of young, regenerating hardwoods.  This activity resulted in a large supply of woody browse for and a subsequent population inflation of white-tail deer (Odocoileus virginianus). 

The highly selective feeding habits of white-tailed deer make them a major determiner of future forest composition and structure.  Therefore, it is important to understand the effects that timber harvest has on deer populations.  This study focuses more specifically on the effects of modern silvicultural treatments on woody browse production and use by white-tailed deer.  Treatments considered include clearcut, intermediate cut, and shelterwood cut (pre and post overstory-removal). 

Author Mark Jackling

Methods

I sampled 12 hardwood stands that had been harvested within 26 years.  Stands were selected using GIS and Huntington Wildlife Forest (HWF) forestry records.  I recorded the total number of current years growth twigs by species as well as the number that showed browse damage on 30 1 m² plots in each stand.  Data were analyzed using paired t-tests. 

Results

Browse abundance was strongly correlated with stand age (Figure 1).  Stands that were    5 years old had significantly more woody browse than those that were > 15 years old.  The two 5 year old stands had more browse than the two 2 year old stands which suggests that browse abundance increases initially after cutting before diminishing to pre-cut levels. 

White ash was used by deer in a greater proportion than any other species with 33% of twigs sampled showing browse damage, followed by beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornuta) with 21% (Fig. 2).  For all other woody species, <10% of available twigs were browsed. 

Figure 1

SW– Shelterwood                   OR– Overstory Removal
CC– Clearcut                            IN– Intermediate

Figure 2

AB-American beech       RM-red maple          St. M-striped maple
HB-hobblebush               SM-sugar maple      Cher-Prunus spp
WA-white ash                  YB-yellow birch         HN-beaked hazelnut
PB-paper birch

Discussion and Conclusions

I found no significant difference in the amount of available browse between different harvest methods.  Differences in available browse between harvest methods were not clearly shown likely due to the confounding effect of stand age.  While I did not conduct a controlled experiment, deer did appear to preferentially browse certain species across all stands.  For each species, percent twigs browsed showed an inverse relationship with the overall abundance (Fig. 2).   A thorough understanding of widespread timber harvest practices is important for conservation of forest biodiversity because human manipulation of the forest landscape through timber harvest is capable of inflating the deer population to overabundant levels by increasing food availability.     

Contact Information

Adirondack Ecological Center: aechwf@esf.edu 

Mark Jackling: mjacklin@syr.edu

About the Author

I am a senior Wildlife Science major at SUNY ESF.

I enjoy hunting, fishing, and just about anything that

gets me outdoors and around wildlife.