The Pennsylvania Game Commission has launched a new tool to identify prime ruffed grouse recovery areas for groups working to restore habitat for Pennsylvania’s state bird, which has experienced a population crash across the state.
The Grouse Priority Area Siting Tool (G-PAST) pinpoints areas where young forests can be created that also are buffered from mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus, which has been implicated as playing a significant role in the dramatic population losses of ruffed grouse.
“It’s not enough to simply create grouse habitat. For best success, habitat must be created in areas buffered from disease-carrying mosquitoes and close to existing grouse populations so birds can quickly colonize new sites,” said Lisa Williams, the commission grouse biologist who identified West Nile’s role in Pennsylvania’s grouse-population collapse.
G-PAST identifies areas with landscape features that stave off mosquitoes. When combined with information on local grouse populations, it identifies priority sites where disease risk is low, and probability of grouse benefit is high.
“We know high-quality grouse habitat is the best way to offset losses from West Nile virus,” said Matthew Schnupp, director of the commission’s Bureau of Wildlife Management. “But if we create better grouse habitat in places with high disease risk, we may be setting grouse up to fail.
“This tool combines cutting-edge geographic-information-system (GIS) analysis with our wildlife research and habitat-management information to identify where we can best help grouse. It’s an approach that puts us in the best position possible to help our state bird.”
G-PAST can be used by habitat partners to focus habitat restoration, develop grant proposals, initiate collaborations at priority sites, enlist high-priority private landowners, and guide their own local clubs and chapters on where to undertake habitat projects.
“G-PAST is a great example of how leveraging geospatial technology in decision-making can advance objectives and goals throughout the agency and among our partners,” said Bob Blystone, the GIS technician who created the tool.
“Agency foresters and land managers have been rapidly increasing efforts to restore the whole community of species that rely on young forests,” noted Pete Sussenbach, director of the commission’s Bureau of Wildlife Habitat Management.
“Creating healthy forests through management provides unique opportunities to meet many different wildlife-management objectives. The agency strives to improve forest health and resilience, and wildlife health and abundance, all at once. G-PAST is the key. It provides a level of guidance unknown in grouse conservation before now.”
Williams said, “Our research on West Nile virus since 2015 has always had one focused goal: Find a way to mitigate West Nile virus impacts so we can recover populations,” Williams explained. “There are many issues facing grouse, but G-PAST is making solid progress on mitigating the two primary drivers of decline: habitat loss and disease exposure.”
G-PAST will enable anyone from a landowner with 20 acres to a land manager overseeing 20,000 acres to find the best areas to invest in grouse habitat work.
Dan Brauning, chief of the commission’s Wildlife Diversity Division, noted that G-PAST will have applications beyond grouse, in the commission’s management efforts for other declining species, like the Canada warbler.
Anyone can check out the tool at the Grouse Priority Area Siting Tool website.
West Nile virus was first detected in the U.S. in 1999 in New York and quickly spread across the country. It coursed through Pennsylvania from 2001-03. Birds are the reservoir hosts of WNV and the virus has been documented in more than 250 species of birds.
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