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Healthy Forests, Abundant Wildlife, Conservation Ethic

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Why Fire is So Important for Wildlife and Habitat

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Fire habitat management
Photo Credit | Jon Steigerwaldt

Looking Back on Fire History to See the Future

What’s the first thing most people think about when they hear the word fire? It often has a bad reputation as a purely destructive, terrible force that ruins the environment and drives out all wildlife. You see it represented that way in popular culture (e.g., Bambi) or even on the news. It’s true – wildfires can be very dangerous and often threaten lives and property. But even when it comes to prescribed fire, many people are still cautious. So how can we turn that negative perception around? I chatted once again with Jon Steigerwaldt, Ruffed Grouse Society Regional Biologist for Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa. It turns out Jon’s Master’s thesis was on fire history, ecology, and implementation. So who better to talk to about this topic? 

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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE – Stay Focused on Habitat

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RGS Mag Pres Msg Fall 2017

When I hunt grouse and woodcock next fall, I want to better clear my mind of all things occupying my thoughts . . .  I want to stay focused on what I’m doing . . . I want to stay focused on hunting, and when I do, I pick up little cues from the surrounding habitat, I pay closer attention to the dog work, I react to flushes better and shoot straighter, and I’m quite sure you’ve made a similar observation. Staying focused helps us enjoy all the hunt has to offer and gives us a much more fulfilling and satisfying hunting experience regardless of whether we bring back any birds at the end of the day.

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WHY WE HUNT: Member Christian Fichtel, North Carolina

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“To those devoid of imagination, a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.” ~ Aldo Leopold

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I’ve always believed that hunting should be difficult. The act of killing, whether avian or ungulate, carries with it a weight of responsibility that should not be forgotten too quickly. In the Southern Appalachians, the mountains in which I wander, the hunting of the ruffed grouse is, at the very best of times, an exercise in patience and effort.

Each year, my home state of North Carolina collects data from participating hunters and publishes the North Carolina Avid Grouse Hunter Survey. After a peak around 1990, the likelihood of success in our southern mountains has declined in a dramatic way. The odds weren’t good 25 years ago, and even a masochist like myself would have found past numbers sufficiently challenging.

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PUBLIC LANDS, ACCESS & THINKING LONG TERM

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By Meadow Kouffeld, RGS & AWS Regional Wildlife Biologist

Despite the current negative state and federal climate toward public land holding, RGS and partners are working with government agencies to reverse this trend.

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RGS member Tracy Lee hunts with her English setter puppy on public land during the RGS National Grouse and Woodcock Hunt near Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

Coming from the West, I appreciate public land. The nature of our western big game requires that large tracts of land are available to support populations substantial enough for hunters to pursue. Huntable numbers of mule deer, blacktails, bighorn sheep, moose, caribou, mountain goats and elk don’t occupy 40-acre stands of trees in seas of corn. Very few people have the financial wherewithal to own thousands of western acres, however America’s greatness comes from our ability to enjoy the great outdoors, hunting and fishing notwithstanding personal wealth.

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2016 RGS GROUSE CAMP TOUR – North Carolina & Georgia

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North Carolina/Georgia

RGS chapters are striving to ensure national forests are properly managed in the Southern Appalachian Region to preserve our grouse hunting traditions for future generations.

The famed conservationist Aldo Leopold once said, “We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.” The word “strive”, being the operative, is exactly what RGS chapter volunteers are doing in North Carolina and Georgia to ensure our public lands, namely national forests, are being properly managed for wildlife.

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2016 GROUSE CAMP TOUR – Virginia/Tennessee

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Virginia/Tennessee

Grouse/woodcock hunters are speaking for the wildlife that cannot speak for themselves – influencing forest management on public lands.

Only partially down the Tennessee mountain trail, Parker Street, of the Appalachian Highlands RGS Chapter, pointed to some Rhododendron sandwiched between clear old growth and a more recently managed mountainside. “Right here . . . there ought to be a bird in here, boys,” he urged.

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2016 RGS GROUSE CAMP TOUR – Monterey, Virginia

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RGS 2016 GROUSE CAMP TOUR – Monterey, Virginia

The Birthplace of the Ruffed Grouse Society

Walking down the short main street of Monterey, Virginia, a small mountain town in the northwestern part of the state, it would be difficult to assume that North America’s leading forest wildlife conservation organization was started there way back in 1961, but it was . . . welcome to the birthplace of the Ruffed Grouse Society.

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Driftless Young Forest Symposium

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Today, the Ruffed Grouse Society brought together agency professionals from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois to focus on landscape-scale goals to enhance future young forest habitat in the Driftless Region.

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Today (August 16, 2016) the Ruffed Grouse Society launched the Driftless Young Forest Symposium in La Crosse, Wisconsin to bring together agency professionals from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois to focus on landscape-scale goals to enhance young forest habitat in the Driftless Region. Symposium goals include providing a clear understanding of the area forest use trends and wildlife impacts, to recognize challenges of forest management in this region and to identify and embrace opportunities for potential landscape-scale benefits to young forest habitat in the future.

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RGS Responds to Anti-Forest Management Message

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Earlier this spring, the Ruffed Grouse Society and American Woodcock Society determined at a strategic planning meeting that public resistance to scientifically sound habitat management practices was one of the top three significant and long-term impediments to the future of healthy forest habitat benefiting not only ruffed grouse and American woodcock but a wide array of forest wildlife.

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