WCW Forestry for Birds for Landowners - University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Forestry for Birds Webinar and Demo Site Tours for Landowners

The Wisconsin Center for Wildlife, the Wisconsin Forestry Center, and UW-Extension Forestry teamed up to provide a unique opportunity for landowners to learn how to manage their woodlots to benefit birds! Sign up for our free webinar and associated forest demonstration site tours, where landowners will learn how to implement sustainable forestry practices to create habitats for upland gamebirds, neotropical migrants, and more while also generating quality timber.

“Forestry for Birds” Webinar

June 6, 2025 3 – 4:15 pm

Are you interested in knowing how sustainable timber harvesting and other forest management activities can help forest bird populations in Wisconsin? Join us virtually to hear Mike Demchik (UW-Stevens Point Professor of Forestry) and Jason Riddle (UW-Stevens Point Wildlife Specialist) discuss their successes in using sustainable timber harvesting, invasive plant control, and prescribed fire to create beneficial habitat for native forest birds.

We’ll introduce three sites where tactics like these were used to assist birds such as woodcock, ruffed grouse, wood thrush and scarlet tanager among others. We’ll also talk about upcoming Field Days in June where you can visit these three locations.

Registrants will be emailed a UW-Extension Forestry Zoom link for June 6.

Landowner Forest Management for Birds – Site tours

The Wisconsin Center for Wildlife, the Wisconsin Forestry Center, and UW-Extension Forestry teamed up to provide a unique opportunity for landowners to learn how to manage their woodlots to benefit birds! Through our free webinar and associated forest demonstration site tours, landowners will learn how to implement specific sustainable forestry practices that create habitats for upland gamebirds, neotropical migrants, and more while also generating quality timber.

Join us for our “Forestry for Birds” Webinar on June 6, 2025, from 3 pm to 4:15 pm, which will cover Wisconsin forest bird ecology, forestry practices to assist native birds, and an introduction to sites where forest management techniques for bird habitat were performed. Sign up here!

Three field days accompany the webinar, providing landowners with a real-life view of how your forestry practices are implemented to create quality habitat for birds. We have three unique site tours available – choose one or join us for all three!
Tours are all Saturdays from 10 am to 2 pm.

Tours are $25 each, two tours for $40, and three for $50.

Exact field site locations, parking information, and more will be emailed to registrants one week before field tours

June 14, 2025

Tour 1 – Clark County

Features forestry techniques including aspen coppice, oak thinning, and shelterwood. Focal bird species: Ruffed grouse, American woodcock, mourning warbler, wood thrush, and veery.

June 21, 2025

Tour 2 – Little Plover River Restoration

Features forestry practices including invasive woody species (buckthorn) control, use of prescribed fire, storm damage remediation, riparian forest management and old forest management in sedge meadow, forestry wetland, and old growth forest ecosystems. Focal bird species: Woodpeckers: downy, hairy, red-bellied Warblers: mourning, ovenbird, chestnut-sided, yellow, American redstart, common yellowthroat Vireos: red-eyed, warbling Others: Sedge wren, swamp sparrow, eastern towhee, wood thrush, Baltimore oriole, great-crested flycatcher, rose-breasted grosbeak, and wood thrush. Physical Difficulty Level: Easy, but challenging if wet.

June 28, 2025

Tour 3 – Taylor County

Features forestry techniques including aspen coppice, conversion to uneven aged stands, overstory removal, and shelterwood. Focal bird species: ruffed grouse, American woodcock, scarlet tanager, blackburnian warbler, mourning warbler, wood thrush and veery.