Focus Species Forestry - Maine Audubon

1. Introduction
It’s a crisp winter morning with fresh
snow weighing heavily on the
branches of the mature spruce and fir.
Two men and a woman—logger,
landowner, and forester—are
observing the bounding tracks of an
American marten that cross the road
from a recently thinned softwood
stand to the mixedwood stand above.
Further on they stop and climb out of
the truck by a patch of dense sprucefir
regeneration, the result of a
shelterwood cut about 10 years ago.
The site is crisscrossed by the tracks
of snowshoe hare, which survive the
winter on hardwood browse but seek
shelter from predators in the low,
Evidence of focus species suggests that the landowner’s
goals of wildlife management and timber harvesting are
being met in this woodlot. Photo: Maine Audubon.
dense branches of the young conifers. While the primary focus of this ownership is timber
production, they are looking for signs that a healthy balance of wildlife habitat is being
maintained, and the results are encouraging. Signs of both the marten, which requires large areas
of relatively mature forest, and snowshoe hare, which prefers young stands, have been seen,
suggesting that other animals associated with these forest stages should also be doing well.
The goal of this manual is to simplify the task
of integrating timber management and
conservation of biodiversity by identifying
and managing for a few Focus Species whose
habitat needs cover those of many other
forest species.
Aldo Leopold once wrote, “The first
rule of intelligent tinkering is to
keep all the pieces.” For many
landowners and managers,
maintaining forest wildlife and
other components of biodiversity—
keeping all the pieces—is a high
priority. Most small woodland
owners own their land for reasons
other than timber production, and
recently many large timberland owners have formally committed to conserving biodiversity
through forest certification programs. Thoughtful loggers who harvest the timber also want to be
sure that they are leaving behind a healthy forest.
While managing to protect native biodiversity is an important goal, the specifics are elusive.
There are just too many things to keep track of. For starters, there are 173 species of forest birds
in Maine. Add in reptiles, amphibians, mammals, insects, plants, fungi, forest ecosystems, and
genetic diversity and the job of managing your woodlot for biodiversity feels overwhelming.
Focus Species Forestry 1