Tree Retention by Arborists for Wildlife Habitat Friendly Tree Care

Summary: Wildlife habitat friendly tree care accepts artificial and natural cavities, crevices and platforms in structurally stable mature and standing-snag trees.

Wildlife friendly tree care entails retention of standing-snags as providers of safe cavity nests for birds, such as pileated woodpeckers; Cedar Lake State Park, near Soda Bay, north central California; May 12, 2016: David Brossard, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

An article in the February 2018 issue of Arborist News auditions wildlife habitat friendly tree care as an aspect of arboriculture since standing dead and live trees alleviate habitat losses among wildlife.

Brian French begins Arborists and Wildlife: Retaining Trees for Wildlife with World Resource Institute estimates that bring the destruction of Earth's natural forests to 80-plus percent. The certified arborist, tree climber, risk assessor and worker considers 82 percent of people and, according to Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 20 percent of birds, city-dwelling. He describes Canada's Migratory Birds Convention Act, New Zealand's Wildlife Act of 1953 and the United States' Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 as wildlife-regulatory laws.

Postponing planned tree work until after nesting season ends emerges as wildlife habitat friendly tree care that encourages successful effects of regulatory laws upon protected species.

The final days of winter through summer, February through August, furnish many, not all, North American wildlife with nesting months simultaneous with habitat friendly tree care.

Cavities get standing tree assessments downward grades despite housing chickadees, clouded salamanders, flying squirrels, great-horned owls, kestrels, mandarin ducks, nuthatches, pileated woodpeckers, swifts and wood ducks. Canopy- through underground-layered vegetation hides geese, grouse, killdeer, plover and savanna sparrow eggs in ground, and other species in cut-bank, ground-cavity, shrub, standing-snag and tree, nests. Wildlife habitat friendly woody plant care involves not only living bushes, shrubs, trees and vines but also habitat snags and standing-snags, identified as standing dead trees.

Junking wildlife habitat friendly tree care jeopardizes wildlife since the International Union for Conservation of Nature judges the Carolina parakeet extinct since 1920 because of deforestation.

The revised ANSI A300 Standard and Arboricultural Best Management Practices no longer keep the pruning term crown-cleaning since deadwood knows wildlife habitat friendly tree care roles.

Nesting cavities of artificially induced or naturally occurring deadwood load more wildlife than live tree cycles and lead to repeat visits to look at structural stability. Arborists may maintain snags, monitored for branch and stem failures, since 5- to 15-foot (1.52- to 4.57-meter) heights match chickadee, house wren and nuthatch nesting preferences. Wildlife need the abundant cavities, decaying substrate, elaborate root systems, height gradients, large deadwood and structural complexity that such maturer and standing-snag trees net for them.

Wildlife habitat friendly tree care optimizes natural bat slits behind drying, dying, sloughing bark and artificial ax- or saw-kerfed crevices for chiropterans obtaining 6,000 mosquitoes nightly.

Wildlife habitat friendly tree care promotes natural and artificial cavities, crevices and cuts such as jagged coronets in limb or stem failure-like retrenchment pruning atop snags.

Eagle, hawk and osprey nesting platforms qualify as wildlife habitat friendly tree care when drilled and fastened with screws and unfriendly with bird-entangling string or wire. Like Pacific northwestern little bats in kerfs, slits and steep-sloped shake roofs, other insectivores in artificial inset cavities rely upon beetles, flies, gnats, mosquitoes and moths. Artificial cavities, crevices, cuts and platforms should structure in species-specific aspects, dimensions, distances from water, height from ground, orientations, predators and primary and secondary excavator occupancies.

Eighteen-plus years of professional practice nationally in Oregon and internationally in Indonesia turn Brian French toward arboriculture as arborist- and nature-tendered wildlife habitats friendly tree care.

Wildlife friendly tree care recognizes retention of standing-snags as valuable for avian species such as pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus), known for dead tree foraging and nesting: nancy j wagner ‏@nancywphoto via Twitter Jan. 11, 2017

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to:
talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet;
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for superior on-campus and on-line resources.

Image credits:

Wildlife friendly tree care entails retention of standing-snags as providers of safe cavity nests for birds, such as pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus); Cedar Lake State Park, near Soda Bay, north central California; May 12, 2016: David Brossard, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coming_Home_(26978929126).jpg

Wildlife friendly tree care recognizes retention of standing-snags as valuable for avian species such as pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus), known for dead tree foraging and nesting: nancy j wagner ‏@nancywphoto via Twitter Jan. 11, 2017, @ https://twitter.com/nancywphoto/status/819213537050361856

For further information:

French, Brian. February 2018. "Arborists and Wildlife: Retaining Trees for Wildlife." Arborist News 27(1): 12-15.

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/04/urban-tree-root-management-concerns.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/02/tree-friendly-beneficial-soil-microbes.html

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Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/healthy-urban-tree-root-crown-balances.html

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