To everyone all over the word PLEASE leave your dead trees standing!
To all my Bay Area people – don’t cut down your dead trees! If you
think there’s no life left in your decomposing wood, you’re dead
wrong. Snags provide wildlife habitats. Their woody lives are not over
yet. When there’s no sign of green left in a tree, it graduates to a
“snag” and takes on a new ecological role. Snags provide homes, food
and nesting places for all kinds of local wildlife.
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As a standing snag, it provides a hunting look-out for birds-of-prey
such as owls and hawks and a place for song birds to sit and sing. In
fact, 85 species of birds call snags home.
There’s also plenty of room for squirrels, raccoons, deer mice, bats, butterflies and reptiles. Woodpeckers find the soft, decaying wood of a snag easy to excavate while finding food and making a nest to raise little woodpeckers.
As a fallen, decomposing log, a snag will entice foxes, skunks, bobcats and
opossums to set up home.
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http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20090304-LIFE-903040327
By Sue Pike
March 04, 2009 6:00 AM
We have two types of woodlands around here. The first is natural, intact stretches littered with downed logs, decomposing, returning nutrients to the soil. Snags (standing dead trees) riddled with woodpecker holes, beetle tunnels, relatively untouched by human hands.
Then there are the managed woods that have been cleared of that unsightly debris; dead wood has been cut up for cord wood or chipped and neatly covers a pristine woodland path, sun shines through the canopy, the view is more open because dead limbs have been lopped off. Aesthetically pleasing, perhaps, but low in biodiversity, a managed forest is unhealthy, a sad, degraded landscape.
Humans have been managing forests forever. A big part of that management has been the removal of dead and dying trees. They were viewed as lightening rods and fire hazards, taking up valuable planting space, and considered unnecessary and unsightly.
It is much more accurate to look at a snag and recognize that it is a natural apartment house teaming with life. A snag, a term in forest ecology that refers to a dead or partly dead tree that is still standing, often missing its top or branches, is a vitally important part of a forest ecosystem.
Snags offer nest sites for countless species, from insects to woodpeckers to raccoons and flying squirrels. Cavity-nesting birds like most woodpeckers, owls, chickadees, titmice and nuthatches are often insectivores which, like the snags they rely upon, are necessary for a healthy forest, by keeping insect populations in check.
Snags also provide food, a banquet of insects and their larvae for foraging skunks and bears, woodpeckers and other insectivorous birds.
Every inch of a dead tree is in use, just take a look. All those tiny holes were made by beetles and larvae chewing through the wood. Peel away some bark and you will find the root-like mycelium of a fungus digesting its own home, a mouse nest, an overwintering moth or spider, an acorn stashed by a red squirrel.
Since the 1970s when it became clear that the removal of snags results in a decrease in forest biodiversity and health, some forward-thinking foresters began to incorporate the retention of snags into their management plans.
If forest-management professionals recognize the importance of leaving snags alone, why don’t the rest of us?
Dead trees are meant to provide decades of housing and sustenance to a significant number of woodland residents before they recycle nutrients back into the soil as the fall to the ground and slowly decompose. This is a beautiful, complex system.
The next time you feel the need to clean up the woods in your back yard, reconsider; clean is a meaningless term in the context of a forest.
Sue Pike of York has worked as a researcher and a teacher in biology, marine biology and environmental science for years. She teaches at York County Community College and St. Thomas Aquinas High School. She may be reached at spike3@maine.rr.com.
Very nice information. Thanks for the time put into the blog you wrote.
Very interesting article and many ways to look at this subject. Many are closed in their thoughts and need to open up a little.