Wildlife
Wildlife Habitat Guide for Landowners
The Landowner’s Guide to Wildlife Habitat is an easy-to-use guide for private landowners in New England for enhancing forest wildlife habitat quality, timber values, and the appearance of forest lands.
Experts from the U.S. Forest Service provide useful information about plans that can improve forests, enhance production of forest products, increase the diversity of wildlife, and increase enjoyment of forest lands through sound forest management. The authors show how to determine what habitats will be used by various wildlife species, and the mixture of habitat features necessary to attract desired species groups. Two of the authors are from Massachusetts:
- Richard DeGraaf, Leader of the U.S. Forest Service Wildlife Habitat Research Unit at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Anna Lester, a Wildlife Biologist with the U.S. Forest Service Research Unit at Amherst.
Landowner’s Guide to Wildlife Habitat, Forest Management for the New England Region by Richard M. DeGraaf, 2005, available from University of Vermont Press.
Birdwatching
The following links have useful introductory material:
- Backyard Birds is an easy-to-read collection of short topics on how to birdwatch, bird behavior, and the physical bird.
- Backyard Birding provides information on feeding, birdhouses, nesting sites, and bird safety. Part of the larger Birding.com web site.
MassWildlife News
Subscribe Online to MassWildlife News!!–This electronic newsletter contains updates on the latest fish and wildlife topics, rare and endangered species, wildlife events and important reminders to sportsmen and women, wildlife enthusiasts and other outdoor-oriented people.
To subscribe send an email to: Join-MassWildlife.news@listserv.state.ma.us. Following confirmation, MassWidlife News will appear in your email once or twice a month. If you access the MassWildlife News home page, you can read past issues going back several years.
Endangered Species
For reference, attached is a list of Berlin Endangered/Extinct Species.
The Massachusetts List of Endangered, Threatened and Special Concern Species, as published in 2008, provides the following definitions:
- “Endangered” (E) species are native species which are in danger of extinction throughout all or part of their range, or which are in danger of extirpation from Massachusetts, as documented by biological research and inventory.
- “Threatened” (T) species are native species which are likely to become endangered in the forseeable future, or which are declining or rare as determined by biological research and inventory.
- “Special concern” (SC) species are native species which have been documented by biological research or inventory to have suffered a decline that could threaten the species if allowed to continue unchecked, or which occur in such small numbers or with such restricted distribution or specialized habitat requirements that they could easily become threatened within Massachusetts.
Any native species listed as endangered or threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is also included on the state list.