Forest Management Is Wildlife Management

Many outdoorsmen buy timberland with the goal of creating a hunting preserve for themselves, their family, and their friends.  They install food plots, open up shooting lanes, and limit disturbances on the property.  They may be wary of conducting timber harvests, releases, or other forest management work for fear of ruining the hunting on the property.  We tell them the same thing my wildlife professor said to our class: “Wildlife management is forest management.”

To many many people, forest management and wildlife management seem to be opposite practices.  It may seem that forest management is useless because in forestry, the trees aren’t going anywhere.  Your goal is to promote the existing stand of timber to reach its highest value.  Animals move, look for food and water, and don’t like to be disturbed.  Many people believe the best way to create wildlife habitat on their property is to install food plots and prevent timber harvesting as much as possible to reduce disturbance. 

However, wildlife respond very well to forest disturbances and diverse timber types.  Whitetail deer eat acorns and hickory nuts but prefer to bed in cutovers.  While these mature stands provide nuts during the fall and winter, they do not have herbaceous understories to graze during spring and summer.  This is found in cutovers and thinned pine stands.  Turkeys like to dustbathe and hunt for bugs in open hardwood stands and fields, but they prefer to roost in tall trees with a good view.  This can be found along a boundary between a cutover and a mature stand.  Ideal quail habitat is comprised of timber stands with scattered pine trees in the canopy and an herbaceous understory.  This is created by conducting heavy thinnings and controlling the understory woody vegetation.

Wildlife are also relatively undeterred by forestry practices.  We have seen large bucks in the middle of active clear-cuts, turkeys fly down from trees along the edges of clear-cuts, and heard quail in both recent cutovers and thinned pine stands. 

Maintaining ideal habitat for game and non-game species requires careful forest management designed to produce conditions ideal for wildlife.  Clear-cuts, thinnings, herbicide applications, and prescribed burns are tools a forester uses to promote forest growth, create wildlife habitat, or both.  Using these tools effectively will help you maximize the wildlife habitat and population on your property.

Thomas Rudd, Forester
NCRF #1699
t.rudd@tmmoc.com