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                     News - June 2005

To Partners and Friends of Great River Greening:

Great River Greening has begun work on Closing the Canopy, a federally-funded project to create more continuous forest habitat for birds that require interior forest conditions for nesting.  Greening’s sites for the project work are Arcola Mills, a historic site on the St. Croix River north of Stillwater, and Tanglewood Forest, part of the St. Croix Watershed Research Station near Marine on St. Croix.

Closing the Canopy is funded by a grant from the Upper Mississippi River Forestry Partnership to improve migratory and forest bird habitat in the Upper Mississippi River Basin. The Upper Mississippi is a federal focus for forest restoration because it is a flyway for 60 percent of all North American bird species. The Upper Mississippi River Forestry Partnership was formed by Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and Indiana State Foresters and the USDA Forest Service to build a watershed-wide approach to forestry in the Upper Mississippi Basin.

Closing the Canopy’s restoration is targeted to buffer, link or enhance sites identified by the Regionally Significant Ecological Areas forest habitat model. The habitat requirements of five bird species—the red-eyed vireo, wood thrush, scarlet tanager, ovenbird and eastern wood pewee—were used to map interior forests.  The habitat requirements of three birds—the cerulean warbler, Louisiana waterthrush and the red-shouldered hawk—were used to map riparian forests. The Arcola Mills and Tanglewood Forest sites currently support or have the potential to support these birds.

Arcola Mills, a 55-acre predominantly wooded site with a half mile frontage on the designated St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, includes a variety of moisture regimes, rare plants and bird habitat. The Greening crew has nearly completed removal of buckthorn, exotic honeysuckle and exotic black locust at Arcola Mills.  The oak wilt outbreak is being addressed. Next spring, the canopy gap left by the oak wilt will be healed by reintroducing local ecotype pine from seeds of the pre-settlement pines on Falls Creek SNA. Pine was a significant component of pre-settlement vegetation and is now absent due to logging and the local lumbering industry. Future work includes bird surveys, exotic earthworm tests, interpretive signs and an interpretive display.

In May, Greening worked with our youth hunter program to heal a four-acre gap in an otherwise unbroken 60-acre forest at Tanglewood. Fifteen youth and mentors planted 400 local ecotype white, red and bur oaks after Greening crew prepared the site. Restoration of the shrub and herbaceous layers at Tanglewood Forest is being investigated. Acorn-collecting and planting to supplement the oak planting is scheduled for later this year.

Forest interior and riparian forest birds need large acres of unbroken forest. Because these unbroken forests are scarce in our fragmented landscape, they need our help, and Closing the Canopy is doing just that.  Matching funds for the project are provided by the Minnesota Environmental Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCMR) through the Metro Conservation Corridors program.

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