LMVJV Breeding Bird Forest Protection Model Completed in December 2019
The LMVJV completed its Breeding Bird Forest Protection Model in 2019, with details of the model published in the December 2019 article Conservation–Protection of Forests for Wildlife in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley in the open access journal mdpi.com/forests. Authors Blaine Elliott, Anne Mini, Keith McKnight, and Dan Twedt describe a refinement of priority forest patches for protection based on a variety of datasets as well as the Forest Breeding Bird Decision Support Model, which they used to identify potential forest patches of >2000 ha as well as dry forest patches, since bottomland forests with limited flooding tend to support more ground-nesting forest bird species.
Extant forest patches within the Mississippi Alluvial Valley with merit for protection to support bird conservation by virtue of having interior core habitat (>250 from hostile edge) area >1600 ha or being located adjacent to high priority (upper 10%) restoration zones.
The modelling effort revealaed that 84% of MAV protected areas are forested. The model also found that just 109 large forest patches (of ≥2000 ha of core forest) held 1.5 million ha of the total 2 million ha of areas meriting additional conservation–protection. Within the 109 large patches, over 1.3 million ha lack current conservation protection.
Ironically, the model indicates that current MAV forests and even more so existing protected areas are biased towards locations that are less likely to face land conversion pressures, since they tend to have a greater flood frequency than non-forest land and are therefore less desirable for agriculture.
The model assigns priority for conservation–protection to core forest patches in the MAV, but these priorities should not be viewed as a directive or desire for increased public ownership of these forests. Private, voluntary conservation easements, such as those held by Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, the Mississippi River Trust, and other conservation organizations can be equally effective at long-term conservation of these bottomland forests. It is hoped that the conservation–protection priorities prescribed by the Forest Protection Model fill an unmet need for land trusts and other conservation partners pursuing strategic forest protection in support of established bird conservation objectives because without protection, existing forests are subject to conversion to other uses.