Managing Forests for Wildlife

wood ducks that winter extensively in southern bottoms, nest throughout much of forested North America. And probably more importantly than use by individual animals, broad-scale landscape habitat conditions affect wildlife community composition and population function of species. For example, very small pockets of forest habitat may serve as sinks for forest interior birds, where mortality exceeds productivity. In this chapter we present some information about habitat relationships and management options at a scale broader than the stand level, such as discussion of edge and streamside zones. But we treat wildlife habitat relationships primarily at the stand level, which is the basic management unit. We approach this by treating suitability of stand structure and composition for wildlife comWildlife species and communities are molded and inf-luenced by a variety of factors, including some abiotic conditions such as climate, topography, soils, and site. These conditions form the basis for productive and diverse southern forests and their wildlife communities. These wildlife communities are affected by habitat conditions at different scales, such as the landscape level and the smaller, stand scale. Species are very different in the scale of habitat that individual animals use. For example. some amphibians have very restricted movements and ranges. Conversely, some larger vertebrates such as white-tailed deer have relatively large home ranges. Some migratory species may use very distant and different habitats at different seasons. For example.