Fighting Fire Without Fire
In areas where even a light controlled burn can be dangerous to surrounding communities, forestry officials at the Massachusetts Division of Fish and Wildlife found that aggressive mechanical thinning of trees and understory can have a beneficial effect on rare wildlife. The Montague Plains Wildlife Management Area in west-central Massachusetts is one of the largest remaining inland, pitch pine-scrub oak habitats in the region. An open-canopy ecosystem that is normally adapted to frequent, low-intensity fires, the pitch pines took over the forest and closed the canopy after fire had been suppressed for many decades, leading to the decline or disappearance of more than two dozen species of butterflies, moths, and birds.
Since the nearby village of Lake Pleasant had been devastated by fires twice in the previous 125 years, there was great concern about instituting a controlled burn program to restore the habitat to its natural condition. As restoration ecologist Tim Simmons said, “If it has burned before, it’s going to burn again, and we didn’t want to do anything to cause that to happen.” And yet the closed-canopy forest and heavy fuel load in the understory had created the potential for a dangerous, unplanned crown fire.
So between 2005 and 2008, the forest was thinned by 70 percent, leaving trees spaced so that they cannot sustain a crown fire, and a great deal of the scrub oak understory was mowed to reduce the fuel load. The resulting landscape is similar to what would have followed from a stand-replacing crown fire. It is now a safer ecosystem, and many of the wildlife species that had disappeared have returned.
“It was instant gratification,” Simmons said. “As soon as we thinned, we saw the increase of several bird species, like American woodcock, ruffed grouse, and brown thrasher.” Prairie warblers, eastern towhees, and whippoorwills also quickly colonized treated areas, and populations of hognose snakes and box turtles benefited as well.
But it was the return of about a dozen species of butterflies and moths – indicators of the health of pine barrens – that best demonstrated that the thinning program was successful at restoring biodiversity. The newly created grassy openings sprouted hundreds of lupine plants, which were soon found by the frosted elfin butterfly, a species of special concern under the Massachusetts Endangered Species Act. The rare barrens buckmoth, which feeds exclusively on scrub oak at this latitude, returned in good numbers, too.
Simmons said that some species take a few years to recolonize historic locations, so he expects even more butterflies and moths will be turning up at the Montague Plains in the next few years.
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