Sunday, September 14, 2003

You'd think he was discussing a wild trout stream he discovered and wanted to keep secret. But Jim DeSaye, president of the Ruffed Grouse Society's Skylands Chapter, was talking about woodcocks and the Wallkill River National Wildlife Refuge in Sussex County.

DeSaye was torn between the urge to describe how great the woodcock hunting will be at the refuge and the desire to keep quiet about it. In the end -- primarily because the Skylands Chapter is proud of the habitat restoration work it did in the refuge -- DeSaye couldn't resist.

"There's a phenomenal amount of woodcock in that refuge," he said. "We had a woodcock walk and I stopped counting at 50 birds in about 20 minutes. As far as I'm concerned, it's probably the best woodcock spot I've ever seen. I've never seen such a concentration."

Next month, sportsmen will be allowed to remove a few of the Wallkill refuge woodcocks. For the first time, hunting the little longbills is being permitted on the grounds.

"You'll be able to hunt about two-thirds of the refuge," said acting refuge manager Steve Kahl. The 4,796-acre wildlife sanctuary is on the New Jersey/New York border in Sussex County.

While the woodcock population at the refuge is already good, DeSaye and his colleagues in the Ruffed Grouse Society are working to make it even better. Last winter they embarked on a habitat improvement and management project that will not only help woodcock, but will also benefit grouse and some "shrubland" songbirds including golden-winged warblers, field sparrows and brown thrashers.

Society members cut down mature aspen trees on about 25 acres of the refuge in an effort to create the "successional habitat" necessary to maintain woodcock and the other birds. "The area regenerated beautifully this summer," said Ruffed Grouse Society Regional Biologist Mark Banker. "It's going to be great woodcock habitat, even better than before."

As a way of thanking the Skylands Chapter for its voluntary effort, the refuge is erecting a sign next week off of Kelly Road in Vernon. It will note that the woodcock habitat was the result of a partnership between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge, and the Ruffed Grouse Society.

DeSaye said his group also helped the state Division of Fish and Wildlife with "huge" habitat restoration projects in the Flatbrook-Roy and Berkshire Valley wildlife management areas and elsewhere.

The goal of the projects is to remove old-growth aspen so that younger aspen can grow. At Wallkill Valley, the society members felled about 100 old trees in the middle of the winter. DeSaye said he checked the site in late spring and was pleased to see "hundreds and hundreds of shoots" already growing. He figures birds will begin using the area heavily in three to four years.

Anything that can improve woodcock habitat in the migratory birds' Eastern Flyway is welcomed, Banker said. He noted the decline of woodcock in the flyway has been "pretty dramatic over the past 30 years or so" primarily because of habitat loss.

"New Jersey is a pretty important state for woodcock," Banker said. "It's along the coast and a lot of birds navigate along the coast. The stop-over areas for birds coming out of New England are very important and that puts New Jersey right in the line of fire."

While some might find it antithetical for the refuge to allow the hunting of woodcock even as it and the Ruffed Grouse Society are working to improve the birds' habitat, Banker supports the decision. He said the habitat improvement outweighs the loss of a few birds to hunters.

"Research in the Northeast says hunting doesn't seem to have any effect at all on the woodcock population," said the biologist. "What the researchers found is that woodcock mortality is about the same whether an area is open to hunting or not. Of course, if you hunt one area long enough you can make a dent ... But people are hunting a lot of the migrating birds in the fall. Those birds are produced somewhere else entirely and you're really not affecting the population all that much."