The short-term reduction in litter, shrubs, and saplings caused by burning
usually results in short-term increases in numbers of ground and aerial-foraging
birds, but decreases in numbers of ground-nesting species (e.g. Wilson et al. 1995;
Artman et al. 2001). The effects of burning on bird composition have been par-
ticularly well studied in forests managed to benefit Red-cockaded Woodpeckers
in the southeastern USA. Here, burning on a less than 5-year rotation, often
accompanied by thinning, has been used to remove broad-leave trees and to
restore and maintain open pine-dominated forests. This procedure increases the
densities of birds typical of open pine-grassland habitats, such as Red-cockaded
Woodpecker, Northern Bobwhite Colinus virginianus, and Blue Grosbeak
Guiraca caerulea, but decreases the densities of birds associated with broad-
leaved trees, such as Tufted Titmouse Baeolophus bicolour(Wilson et al. 1995,
Provencher et al. 2002). Prescribed burning can also be used to kill stands of trees
in order to encourage desired stages of regrowth, and to stimulate regeneration.
In Michigan, USA, burning is used to kill stands of old Jack Pine Pinus banksiana
to provide young (7–21 years old) stands suitable for Kirtland’s Warblers
(Byelich et al. 1985).
14.7.4 Planting and harvesting regimes
A range of management systems is used for producing and harvesting wood
products. Clear-felling consists of periodic harvesting and re-planting of areas of
trees. Shelterwood systems involve felling only a proportion of trees at any one
time, in order to retain a partial canopy to shelter the following crop. Coppicing
involves cutting broad-leaved trees close to the ground to produce regrowth of
straight poles for fencing, charcoal production, and other uses. The resulting
“coppice stools” are intermixed with “standard” trees, which are left to grow tall
and periodically harvested for timber. Conifer trees do not regrow in this way.
The avifauna of harvested blocks of forest changes in relation to age of
regrowth. The avifauna of the forest as a whole can therefore be influenced by
altering the length of the harvesting rotation, so as to change the proportions of
different ages of regrowth present at any one time. The avifauna of regrowth
changes in relation to vegetation height as described in Section 14.7.1. However,
since trees are harvested prior to maturity, bird species associated with later stages
of forest growth are invariably scarce. In coppice, breeding bird densities typi-
cally increase during the first 5 years or so of regrowth, remain high during the
period of canopy closure, but decline thereafter. Bird densities then remain low
during the rest of the coppice cycle and, should coppicing cease, continue to
remain low for a considerable time with only a very slow increase in species asso-
ciated with older-forest growth (e.g. Fuller and Henderson 1992).
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