"In 2013, with the help of a $15,000 Innovations and Collaborations grant from the Community Foundation, Audubon teamed up with Vermont’s Department of Forest, Parks, and Recreation and the Vermont Maple Sugar Maker’s Association to launch the Bird Friendly Maple Project, an effort to encourage sustainable sugarbush management practices"................"High demand for maple syrup has tempted some producers to remove non-maple trees from their sugarbushes—it’s a good strategy to maximize sap production, at least in the short term".......... "But it leaves something out as the sugarbush is a forest ecosystem that provides multiple benefits, including homes for many kinds of birds"................ "And maple monocultures provide lower quality habitat than a sugarbush with a variety of tree species"............." Birds thrive best in environments with lots of different nooks and crannies to hide, forage, and raise their young".................. "They need structural diversity—different sizes and shapes of plants, rocks, fallen logs, and so on"............. "And they need biological diversity—different species of plants and insects and other critters to eat and share resources with"............. "That same structural and biological diversity that is better for the birds is also better for the trees"................. "According to Audubon Vermont Conservation Biologist Steve Hagenbuch, sugarbushes made up of at least 20% tree species other than sugar maple are less likely to suffer major losses from sugar maple insects or diseases"......... "And growing young trees under the older ones offers great places to nurture baby birds, while ensuring a future for the bush"........... "Biodiversity increases the resilience of the forest over the long term, in part by providing healthy habitat for the birds that help manage insect populations and other potential threats to forest health"........... "These things, in turn, are also ultimately better for the humans who harvest from the woods"

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Syrup and sweet sounds: 

Maple producers keep an eye out for birds

By Noella May Pickett-March 27, 2017

The mission of Audubon Vermont, a chapter the National Audubon Society, is to protect birds, wildlife and their habitat through education, conservation, stewardship and action. With the Bird-Friendly Maple Project, maple producers are getting involved.

Audubon Vermont has undertaken a conservation partnership with the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation and the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association by developing the project to enhance the habitat quality of Vermont’s maple sugar bushes and promote pure maple products.

“Audubon Vermont has been working on forest bird conservation as one of its main programs for the past 10 years,” said Steve Hagenbuch, a conservation biologist with Audubon Vermont. “The sugar bushes, or forests managed primarily for maple sap production, also provide the summer nesting habitat for many bird species. The majority of these are migratory, spending the winter in Central America, Mexico, South America, or the Caribbean. How these sugar bushes are managed in part determines whether the habitat provided there will be just all right, or high quality.

“The higher the quality habitat, the greater the chance a species will be able to successfully raise the next generation … This project, developed in 2014, is a great opportunity to bring together two extremely important aspects of Vermont’s forestland in a way that benefits birds and people.”

Maple sugaring operations across the Green Mountain State are evolving their business models in regards to new ecological criteria. The participating producers are intentionally incorporating new habitat considerations into the management of their forests.

“It was a no-brainer,” said Eric Sorkin, owner of Runamok Maple in Cambridge. “The stewardship of our land was front and center in our minds, and organic was never a question. We didn’t have to do anything we weren’t already doing both philosophically or physically. This project provides tremendous opportunity to enhance the landscape and to enhance and preserve songbird population.”

Vermont, currently celebrating Maple Open House Weekend, may be a small state, but maple is big business, bringing approximately $260 million to the state economy.

“Vermont produces the greatest amount of syrup in the country. In 2016, Vermont produced nearly two million gallons of maple syrup, 47 percent of the entire U.S. crop,” Hagenbuch said.

“There’s a real opportunity with this project, as maple syrup has been growing across the country,” Sorkin said. It’ll really keep our forests intact.”

Sugar bushes are inherently good for birds, and participating producers have made a commitment in taking an extra step to think about birds along with the management of their sugar bush.

With a background in forestry, Dave Mance, of Mance Family Tree Farm in Shaftsbury, explained that the biggest change for him to become recognized as bird-friendly involved improving two basic practices, for which he needed expert guidance.

“I needed to tend to my forest differently by thinning to create more openings to allow for more sunlight,” Mance said. “Furthermore, I needed to change how I cleared the forest ground. I had to look at dead trees in a completely different way — they are an essential part of promoting a bird-friendly habitat.”

Most Sugarbush owners strip their land of horizontal
and vertical undercover plants, destroying wildlife and
other plant life habitat

Forest stand with excellent horizontal and vertical
structure, ideal for optimizing biodiversity

Promoting a better bird habitat involves incorporating a simple management plan.

“I am a birder myself, and care deeply about forest responsibility and productivity,” said Drew Lamb, owner of Lamb Sugarworks in Calais. “This project was a great way to gather someone’s expert assessment to promote a good bird habitat. Audubon was great to work with, and their management plan was easy to incorporate with my current plan.”

The project is not exclusive to sap or birds. It’s about forest health and long-term sustainability. Additionally, the project is inclusive of all maple syrup producers, on a micro or macro level.

“This project provides maple producers with a way to distinguish their products from others,” Hagenbuch said. “All recognized producers receive labels that they can affix to their maple products. They also receive a sign to post at their sugarhouse or retail location. In a highly competitive Vermont syrup market, having your products stand out is important. The producers are also simply interested in doing what they can to help out birds as they manage their land, and inherently believe this is the right thing to do.”

There are now 20 maple producers recognized as bird-friendly in Vermont, the only state where a project of this nature exists. Hagenbuch noted however, there are other states showing interest, such as New York, New Hampshire and Maine.

Several producers are applying the bird-friendly stickers to their products for the first time.

“One of the frustrating aspects with forestry and the beauty of it is that it takes time to fully develop and adjust,” Mance said. “In approximately three to five years we’ll begin to see the actual results of what we’ve done. However, in the meantime I feel good about managing with songbirds in mind.”

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Foresters, Birders Team Up to Improve Habitat And Timber

By JOHN DILLON • JUL 2, 2013

It’s an hour or so after dawn in the Sterling Forest -- 1,500 acres of mixed northern hardwoods that belongs to the town of Stowe.

The lush woods are crisscrossed with hiking, skiing and mountain bike trails. The forest is also actively managed for timber production. But the morning chorus indicates there’s another beneficiary of this hilly timber lot: songbirds.

A Vermont Forest stand with excellent vertical and horizontal

structure, not "cleaned out" with only mature trees left

standing--excellent habitat for birds and animals to make homes

in and find food

Vermont’s vast forests are an important economic and recreational resource. But, like the Sterling Forest, the region’s woodlands are also home to a high concentration of breeding songbirds. These pint-sized, colorful migrants head north each summer to feast on insects and raise their young. They need a wide variety of forest types and structure to thrive.

Forester, loggers and bird conservationists are now working together to improve both forest stewardship and bird habitat.

A leading advocate for that effort is Michael Snyder, a Stowe resident and former country forester who marked trees and oversaw a logging job at the forest several years ago. Snyder is now commissioner of Forest Parks and Recreation. He’s back in the woods to see how they responded to the timber harvest,



A healthy forest has horizontal and vertical
structure(below)

Looking at a regenerating patch of softwoods, the song of a Magnolia warbler makes him smile. That’s because on the other side of the logging road – where the trees weren’t cut – the woods are sparse, thin, and quiet. Snyder points out the difference.

“There’s some struggling spruce and fir in the under-story, a dense over-story, a highly competitive situation, not really doing much. And, I might point out, kind of silent over there,” he says. “You look over here where we’ve manipulated it, that’s where all the birds are singing. I think that’s a pretty good indication that we’re on to something here.”

Optimum horizontal and vertical structure in a Forest
yields optimum life of all kinds

With us on the walk is Kristen Sharpless, a conservation biologist with Audubon Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and an iPhone loaded with a bird song app, Sharpless explains that Vermont’s part of the northern forest is a major refuge for breeding songbirds.

“We’re at the core of their breeding range. They’re common here but not elsewhere. Many of them are experiencing long-term population decline, so they’re at risk,” she says. “And the group we focus on uses a whole variety of forest habitats and conditions.”

Think of the forest as providing different levels of vertical and horizontal structure, almost like a city with both three story home and tall apartment buildings. Each layer in the woods offers different habitat types for different species. The Magnolia warbler prefers the lower levels; its cousin, the Blackburnian warbler, likes the tree canopy.


Excellent horizontal and vertical structure--Forest Alive!!!

We come to an area of the hillside where some large sugar maples were removed to create openings. It’s now regenerated with a riot of new hardwood growth. Sharpless explains how openings like this favor certain types of warblers and other species, including a yellow-rumped warbler that’s made this place its summer home.

“There’s a whole group of them that would tend to be in these bigger openings with this regeneration. Those are part of the forest when you get wind disturbance or ice storms or insect outbreaks you would naturally get these openings or gaps,” she says. “And they would be variable in size like this with snags and occasional over-story trees retained. So it doesn’t need to be all uniform and really big to attract these particular groups of birds.”

Sharpless and Snyder say foresters, landowners and bird conservationists can align their goals, harvesting trees while improving these structural aspects of the forest.


Excellent "tangle" and hiding places for Birds

Audubon and the Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation have teamed up to offer technical assistance. To date, more than 100 foresters have taken advantage of the training. Snyder says the woods can be managed with birds in mind without sacrificing economic potential.

“If you have that you can maintain those hundreds of thousands of acres in this healthy forest condition continuously, meaning providing goods and services and creating this awesome habitat,” he says.

A black throated blue warbler interrupts his thoughts. Snyder calls the bird the poster child of this kind of forest management. 

“With that species, we were really hoping to enhance the habitat, and I believe we have,” he says.


Vibrant forest understory and floor optimizes biodiversity

As the sun rises higher, we hear several more warblers, nuthatches, and two species of vireo. A bald eagle – its white head gleaming in the bright light– also soars overheard. Snyder and Sharpless continue through the list:

“Hermit thrush, oven bird, chickadee…  Blackburnian. That’s 15. You can call it a forester’s dozen, how about that?” Snyder laughs.

It was an impressive morning of bird watching – and listening – in a forest that produces timber, recreation and song.