A Sampling of What You'll Learn from the Stewardship Handbook

• Natural lands typically retain far greater volumes of stormwater than agricultural or developed areas, maintaining more consistent stream baseflows during drought periods and fewer and less severe floods during periods of high flow.

• Browsing by overabundant deer populations is the most significant factor in forest decline in Pennsylvania. With deer consuming much of the annual acorn crop and the few surviving oak seedlings, indications are that oak communities on many natural lands will eventually give way to red maple- and beech-dominated communities. Oaks, in general, are of major importance to wildlife. Acorns are at the top of the food preference list for wood ducks, pheasants, grackles, jays, nuthatches, thrushes, woodpeckers, rabbits, foxes, squirrels, and deer.
• Fragmentation of our forests is second only to outright destruction and conversion of forestland as a cause of degradation of habitat quality and biodiversity.

• Riparian forests help to maintain water temperatures by providing shade, absorbing pollutants, accumulating sediments from agricultural and residential runoff, stabilizing streambanks, and adding leaves and woody debris to the stream which furnishes food and shelter for aquatic organisms. When floodplains are naturally forested and contain networks of wetlands, they also dissipate the velocity and disperse the volume of flood waters, reducing downstream hazards to human health and property.

• The first priority in invasive species control is to protect the canopy of forests by removing vines climbing into trees.

• Because southeastern Pennsylvania was never glaciated, ponds are not a natural component of the landscape (except for a few oxbow ponds along large streams), but they are common in the region due to their former use for irrigation, fire control, water supply, or flood control. Though they can be aesthetically pleasing, ponds are not without problems: thermal pollution of associated streams, attraction of Canada geese, costly maintenance, and dams that obstruct the movement of aquatic organisms, to name a few.

• Maintaining meadows and grasslands in large blocks (at least 25 acres) or as part of a larger open landscape provides habitat for several rare grassland bird species. But native meadows and grasslands of just a few acres or less can provide habitat for species of declining and imperiled butterflies such as the giant swallowtail or the silver-bordered fritillary and birds such as the American kestrel, barn swallow, and eastern bluebird.

• Lawn and landscaped areas provide little ecological benefit and usually are the most costly in the long term in personnel time, fuel and equipment costs, and carbon “footprint.”

The Stewardship Handbook is available at www.natlands.org/handbook for purchase as a color, spiral-bound book or as a free download.