National wildlife society in county studying birds

Published 5:00 pm Wednesday, June 30, 2004

The Wildlife Conservation Society, a national organization, has four persons working in Wallowa County to study how wildlife, in particular song birds and woodpeckers, react to different types of forest management. Test plots 10 hectares in size (one hectare is about the equivalent of one football field) have been created on three parallel ridges north of Enterprise, near Starvation Ridge, where the management techniques of thinning, thinning followed by prescribed fire and prescribed fire are being employed.

Wallowa County, now in its fourth year of the study, is one of 13 sites undergoing the “national fire surrogate study.”

The Wildlife Conservation Society comprises one aspect, the wildlife crew, of the much larger surrogate study, in collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Research Station and the U.S. Forest Service.

The Society researchers gathered locally at the end of May and will continue their bird counts until Aug. 1, covering the core of the bird breeding season.

“This is the kind of information that will help forest managers understand the kinds of treatments that will help reduce forest fire hazard,” said Society spokesman Steve Zack. “We can learn how wildlife respond to treatments.”

Zach said the researchers are assessing the diversity and abundance of birds, giving special notice to cavity nesters such as nuthatchers, of which there are three species in Wallowa County.

The national headquarters of the Wildlife Conservation Society is in the Bronx Zoo in New York. Zack said that the Society has a field office in Portland.