Yearbook^ of Agriculture 1949 



of a flicker, a nighthawk with a stom- 

 achful of 500 mosquitoes, and a yellow- 

 billed cuckoo that had consumed 250 

 tent caterpillars. 



Wildlife is a natural part of the small 

 woodland. It belongs there just as the 

 trees themselves, the duff on the wood- 

 land floor, and the rich soil beneath 

 the trees. Without wildlife the small 

 woodland is a poor place ; with wildlife 

 the small woodland is a better place for 

 the trees, and a more productive, use- 

 ful, and attractive place for people. 



EDWARD H. GRAHAM is chief of the 

 Biology Division of the Soil Conserva- 

 tion Service. Before he joined the De- 

 partment in 1937, Dr. Graham was for 

 years engaged in botanical studies for 

 the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. 

 He has written many scientific and 

 technical papers on plant sciences and 

 wildlife ecology, and is the author of 

 several books, among them a treatise on 

 the application of biological principles 

 to the management of land, Natural 

 Principles of Land Use. 



FORESTS AS A WILDLIFE HABITAT 



LLOYD W. SWIFT 



The amount and quality of food, the 

 difficulty in getting it, and the assur- 

 ance that there will be some next 

 winter determine many of the activities 

 and habits of man and beast how 

 hard one works, where one lives, how 

 well one is nourished. So, too, with 

 shelter, weather, and moisture (which 

 we sum up in the word habitat) , which 

 determine, for instance, whether a deer 

 can live in a desert, whether a variety 

 of corn can grow in Alabama, whether 

 one can transplant a wild flower from 

 its native woods to a garden. Almost 

 any change in habitat can change the 

 number and kind of living things in it. 

 Wild things, wild mammals and birds, 

 reflect more exactly than tamer crea- 

 tures the conditions of their habitat, 

 which nature and man are constantly 

 changing. 



The minute they put foot on these 

 shores the first settlers from Europe 

 started changing the habitat of wild- 

 life. They (and their descendants) 

 pursued and killed the birds and ani- 

 mals for food, clothing, or recreation, 

 or because the wildlife conflicted with 

 crops or livestock ; they also caused far- 

 reaching changes in habitat by clearing 

 land, logging, and fires. 



Originally in the eastern half of the 

 United States, much of the cover was 

 of hardwoods, to which many kinds of 



wildlife were adapted and in which 

 the nuts or mast from oaks, hickories, 

 chestnuts, walnuts, and beech and the 

 fruits and berries of gum, grape, dog- 

 wood, persimmon, and other trees, 

 vines, and shrubs gave ample food. 

 The hardwood forests also provided 

 small tree dens for squirrels, larger ones 

 for raccoons, and trunk dens for big 

 animals, like the black bear. Less fav- 

 orable a habitat were the original conif- 

 erous forests in the East; the pine, 

 hemlock, and spruce stands furnished 

 a smaller variety and quantity of food, 

 and dens were less frequent and satis- 

 factory. Therefore, the animals of the 

 conifer forests were likely to be more 

 specialized, or at least closely asso- 

 ciated with the more restricted food 

 and the cover conditions found in the 

 conifer forests. 



Where the two types overlapped 

 and made a mixture of hardwoods and 

 conifers, or where the local climate was 

 modified by protected and exposed 

 sites, such as in the mountains, the 

 variety of food and cover undoubtedly 

 favored a greater variety of wildlife, 

 but not necessarily a greater quantity 

 than in the food-rich hardwood forests. 



In the West, the forests were largely 

 conifers junipers commonly occupied 

 the low places in the Rocky Mountains 

 and adjacent areas, spruces the higher 



