Posted on 10/28/2019
If there’s been a central, unquestioned tenet of bird conservation in the past quarter-century, it’s been the absolute importance of large, intact tracts of mature woodland. As populations of species such as Wood Thrush, which evolved to nest deep in the interior of mature woodlands, have continued to fall for decades, the remedy for reversing those declines seemed straightforward: To save forest birds, protect and restore the unfragmented forest they need to successfully nest.
But a growing number of conservation biologists, citing a rapidly expanding body of science, say the opposite is also true—that logging can be essential to creating bird habitat.
Cutting down trees to help birds sounds heretical. And the science clearly shows that intact forests are critical for interior-nesting species like Worm-eating and Cerulean Warblers, and S...