How cutting down trees is actually helping West Virginia’s ‘unofficial state bird’

CLARKSBURG, W.Va. (WBOY) — It might sound counterproductive, but the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (WVDNR) is cutting down trees to improve the habitat of West Virginia’s “unofficial state bird” — the cerulean warbler.

12 News spoke with West Virginia State Ornithologist Richard Bailey, who said that in the 1880s to 1920s, much of the state’s forests were logged, causing large portions of forest to regrow at the same time. This regrowth has resulted in a lack of diversity in the ages of trees throughout the state forests, Bailey said.

“In other words, there’s no gaps in the forest canopy. There’s not much in the way of daylight reaching the forest floor,” Bailey explained. “It creates this structurally not very complex forest stand where you have what looks like a forest, but if you get in the understory, that don’t necessarily have well-developed shrub communities and plant communities.”

Since 2014, the WVDNR has been working to diversify the age of West Virginia forests by cutting down “about half” the trees in wooded areas to make them better habitats for cerulean warblers. The reason these birds are sometimes referred to as the “unofficial state bird” of West Virginia is because the Mountain State is home to more than one-third of the world’s breeding population of cerulean warblers during mating season, according to Baliey.

Over the past 50 years, the cerulean warbler has seen a steady population decline, as much as 65-70% between 1966 and 2008. West Virginia’s high concentration of these blue birds means the state is one of the best-positioned areas to try and slow down or counteract the steady loss of cerulean warblers.

“Cerulean warblers really do well in forest stands that are structurally complex—that’s the phrase I use—but it means it has canopy gaps, it means it has a well-developed understory, things like that,” Bailey said.

The WVDNR manages more than 500,000 acres of forest, but there’s even more land that is privately owned, and it’s the privately owned land that has become a renewed focus of the division’s cerulean warbler habitat efforts.

According to a press release from the WVDNR, it recently finished its “demonstration area” near Summersville Lake. The area will serve as a model for private landowners to see the positive impact of “implementing farm bill projects on their properties to enhance habitat for cerulean warblers,” according to the release. Besides helping multiple wildlife species, these forest cutting projects also come with cost assistance from the WVDNR, according to Bailey.

If you want to learn more about the WVDNR’s cerulean warbler habitat restoration efforts, you can read the full press release here. For any landowners interested in participating in the program, Bailey encourages landowners to contact the state office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service.