Is grouse hunting good for nature conservation?

Yes

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by Wm. Hovey Smith

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The Ruffed Grouse has been a notable part of North America's wild bird population. It is an interesting bird with spectacular mating habits and also as an object of food gathering and sport hunting. This grouse is only one of a number of grouse species in North America. The largest representative of the grouse family is the Wild Turkey. There are also Sage, Spruce, Blue, Sharptail and Franklin and other medium-sized grouse that occupy more restricted habitats. The Ruffed Grouse, with is range from New England down to the end of the Southern Appalachians up all the way through Canada to the Alaskan arctic, is the most widespread and what most people think of as "grouse."

In recent years Ruffed Grouse numbers, particularly in New England, have been declining, even through fewer people are living on the land and more former marginal crop and pasture lands are reverting into forests. These are nice looking forests that are wonderful to walk through, but are almost completely barren of grouse.

Why?

Those conservationists who are called in derision "tree huggers," very often protest the harvesting of mature forests, stating that this is "ruining the environment." While it is true that there is no distrubence of the environment that does not have some negative impacts, like siltation if streams (now much more controlled that in formerly), it is equally true that there are also benefits. These benefits arise because it is in the briers, whips, weeds, struggling second growth that many wildlife species prosper. In fact, Ruffed Grouse cannot thrive without access to the buds, insects and berries that grow in these clear-cut properties, however terrible they might look to us. These grouse need periodic disturbances on about a 10-year cycle. As the forest canopy grows to shade out more and more of the plants that these grouse need to survive in and on, their numbers will progressively decrease.

Areas that now provide the largest numbers of Ruffed Grouse are, to the absolute shock of most environmentalist, lands that have been reclaimed from strip-mining coal. I am not saying that some of these mining operations do not have adverse environmental impacts such as pollution of water supplies, unstable spoil piles and so on, but this is a practical demonstration that Ruffed Grouse as well as deer and black bear prosper in environments that many consider damaged beyond all hope of recovery. Nature will heal in time. We humans have too short a life span to appreciate it, particular since many of us no longer interact with wild nature on a daily basis. I have. I have seen the result of volcanic eruptions and where fields of once red-hot ash are now recovering and streams are once more running with salmon.

In natural circumstances what we are really seeing is Nature's recovery from the last catastrophic event. This could have been forest fires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves or hurricanes. All result in stripping away of mature forest and a re-start of the natural processes of regeneration and regrowth that so many of our animals need to prosper. Even in the tropical rain forests there needs to be some regeneration and regrowth. Just as wholesale cutting and clearing is not desirable in the Amazon Basin, neither is the other extreme of wholesale preservations of forest lands desirable in New England.

To a limited degree grouse will migrate from areas of maturing forests to nearby areas of better habitat. It is simple to think that all habitat should be of one type. This is too simplistic to adequately reflect natural systems. One can almost never go wrong to have as much a habitat mix as can be managed. Yes, there should be some mature forests. There also needs to be cleared areas. This is what natural forest fires provided in pre-settlement North America. A larger area of recovering forest in various stages of growth is desirable so that small birds, ground-dwelling mammals and even amphibians and reptiles have adequate shelter, food and breeding opportunities. It does not hurt to also allow have some small plot farming, ranching or dairy operations.

Unlike other birds like pheasant and quail, all attempts to raise and release Ruffed Grouse have been unmitigated failures. Grouse apparently learn by example. The young chicks are shown what berries to eat, what cedar trees to shelter in during storms, how to survive in deep snow, what buds are eatable and generally how to survive by their parents and fellow covey members. The only restocking that has been at all successful is the capture and relocation of wild birds, as has been done with the Wild Turkey.

The change in allowing habitat diversity will be that birds and animals that have not been seen in the area for decades will start to return. Instead of a bird watcher going to a mature wood with only the expectation of seeing or hearing a Pileated Woodpecker, that nests and feeds on mature trees, they will also find Ruffed Grouse, song birds in profusion and a variety of small and large animals in the disturbed lands they pass through to get to their beloved stand of big trees.

Simply put, if you want diversity in animal species, there must also be diversity in habit. We need to harvest trees on a regular basis to maintain healthy environmental diversity.

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