Project Area
The Green Mountain Audubon Center (GMAC) is a designated Important Bird Area located in Huntington VT, along the banks of the Huntington River adjacent to the Birds of Vermont Museum. The 255-acre property operated by Audubon Vermont consists of wetlands, streams, meadows, and forests comprised of conifer and various northern hardwood species. Like many of the region’s forests, much of the property’s forests have established since agricultural abandonment took place around 100 years ago, with no evidence of management since that time. The forest is composed of mostly even-aged, multi-strata stands with an upper canopy of hemlock and a mid-story of various northern hardwood species. There is a 10-acre sugarbush with a sugar/red maple overstory and a red oak-hemlock midstory on the property that has been used for syrup production since the 1940’s, and is an important component of the environmental education programs at the Center. The GMAC serves as a demonstration area for the Foresters for the Birds program, which provides tools and training for forest and natural resource professionals to help landowners integrate management of timber and migratory bird habitat.
Management Goals
The GMAC supports significant environmental education, scientific research, and outdoor recreation efforts on the property, in addition to maintaining and enhancing a mosaic of habitat types far all wildlife species. Wildlife management goals including managing for “responsibility species” as identified by Audubon Vermont’s Forest Birds Initiative, which manages for species that Vermont’s forests play a globally significant role in maintaining viable populations. Research goals include understanding the response of bird communities to forest management on the property so practices can be adapted accordingly. Other goals include low-impact recreation on the Center’s many hiking trails, and maintaining maple syrup production for educational programs.
In 2007, Audubon Vermont created a Management Plan for the entire GMAC property. The Plan identified several stands covering roughly 40 acres where active management would took place. Harvesting occurred recently on several of these stands, subsequently Audubon Vermont started to work on updating the Management Plan to identify future work across the property, including these stands as well as in the 10-acre sugarbush. Updates to the Management Plan will focus on the continued education and research goals of the GMAC, particularly managing for neo-tropical bird breeding habitat. Efforts to update the Center’s Management Plan recognizes that management activities to enhance the habitat value of forests for priority bird species also provides significant co-benefits for both climate adaptation to and carbon benefits to maintain and enhance forest health on the property.
Specific management objectives for the GMAC include:
- Protect interior forest conditions for neo-tropical songbird breeding habitat
- Increase sawtimber quantity, quality, and volume increment
- Increase understory development
- Reduce beech competition increase regeneration
- Controlling invasive species and prevent establishment of new invasives, particularly along hiking trails and in disturbed areas
Climate Change Impacts
Challenges and Opportunities
Challenges
Opportunities
Adaptation Actions
Project participants used the Adaptation Workbook to develop several adaptation actions for this project that provide an array of benefits—including bird habitat, timber, and carbon—while increasing the ability of the forest to adapt to changing conditions for this project.
Adaptation tactics include:
2.5 Reduce competition for moisture, nutrients, and light
3.5 Alter forest structure to reduce the risk, severity, or extent of wind and ice damage
6.6 Promote species and structural diversity to enhance carbon capture and storage efficiency
7.1 Favor existing species or genotypes that are better adapted to future conditions