Habitats of Special Concern
One of the most dramatic demonstrations of how birds can be useful as management tools is to ask whether there are species that seem to be associated with (perhaps even dependent upon) very specific naturally occurring environmental conditions.
For example, biologists have been able to use bird distribution patterns to highlight the importance and uniqueness of old-growth forests in the
Pacific Northwest—Spotted Owls are nearly restricted to that forest type. Similarly, we have shown that severely burned conifer forests in the Intermountain West also require special
management attention because there are bird species that are relatively restricted in their distribution to those environmental conditions as well.
Thus, birds help expose the biological value of naturally occurring vegetation conditions that we might otherwise overlook in our plans to maintain all critical parts of the ecosystem.
We have investigated whether burned forest types, old-growth dry forest types, and beetle-infested forest types provide biologically important habitat to birds in this region. Click on one of the subheadings to the left to view results of these studies.