In our continued live virtual birds and brew, we were joined by Dr. Ben Jones of Ruffed Grouse Society and Ron Boehme of the Hunting Dog Podcast. Ben took us through some of his vision for RGS and gave us a glimpse of what on the horizon. We also played some trivia with the audience and amongst ourselves.
RGS & AWS is excited to have completed our second National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant focused on building our private lands technical assistance program in Pennsylvania. Together with the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC), American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), we were able to fund habitat improvement projects on over 800 acres of forestland. These habitat improvements included a variety of practices such as herbicide and mechanical treatment of competing vegetation and silvicultural supplement payments to remove low-value stands and reset early successional habitat.
Outreach done under this project reached more than 5,000 individuals, including 606 landowners...
Ruffed Grouse, The King of Spring, the Bellwether of All Forest Wildlife, has a very fragile future. According to the Ruffed Grouse Society, their populations have declined at least 50% throughout the Eastern United States in the last 20 years and current projections indicate numbers will be zero in our lifetime. So please, join us as we introduce the Give for Grouse Initiative and work to bring ruffed grouse back to our forests. Your donations will be earmarked strictly for ruffed grouse management projects. We will take your dollars and distribute them to groups and organizations all across the ruffed...
Agreement Narrative: Hiawatha Early Successional ProjectPrimary Funder: Hiawatha National Forest (Challenge Cost Share)Location: Hiawatha National Forest, MichiganInnovation: This project leverages a mutual interest in working together to enhance early successional species habitat across the landscape. By creating a patchwork of various age classes of aspen and alder, this project aims to provide habitat diversity for ruffed grouse and American woodcock nesting, brood rearing, and winter habitat components in close proximity to each other.Impact: This project directly impacts 195 acres within the St. Ignace Township region of the Hiawatha National Forest. One hundred acres of mature and over-mature aspen will be...
Agreement Narrative: Huron-Manistee Stewardship Agreement Primary Funder: Huron-Manistee National Forest (Stewardship Agreement) Location: Cadillac-White Cloud Ranger District, Huron-Manistee National Forest, Michigan Innovation: Utilizing the USFS goods-for-service Stewardship program, will contract to establish and administer commercial timber projects. The timber harvest activity itself will contribute to forest age-class diversification within the region, while proceeds from the sale will be used to fund additional acres of commercial timber harvest as well as habitat and access projects within the Cadillac-White Cloud Ranger District of the Huron-Manistee National Forest. Impact: The initial phase of this project will see the sale and contract administration of a 99-acre aspen timber...
Agreement Narrative: Pere Marquette Forest Habitat Collective
Primary Funder: Michigan Wildlife Habitat Grant Program
Location: Baldwin Ranger District, Huron-Manistee National Forest, Michigan
Innovation: A landscape-level forest habitat enhancement project focused within the Pere-Marquette River watershed. By leveraging the specialties of partner organizations, it aims to manage a variety of cover types by employing multiple strategies. Service work items target forest structural and age class diversity, an increase in native plant diversity, thermal cover, forage, pollinator plantings, and edge habitat for wildlife.
Impact: This project directly impacts 320 acres of habitat and is part of a larger strategy that includes over 14,000 acres of NEPA...
