On January 15, John Scanlon, MassWildlife Habitat Program Supervisor, of Barre, MA retired after 35 years of service. The Habitat Program will now be managed by Brian Hawthorne, who was promoted from his role as Habitat Planning Coordinator.
The job of Habitat Program Manager is 1.) To inventory and assess the State’s Wildlife Management Areas (WMA), particularly the forested portions, which is the majority of land. 2.) To design and contract management practices to benefit a diversity of species, (game and non-game) whether common, declining, threatened or endangered. Thanks to the State Wildlife Action Plan, many species of conservation need have been identified across the state.
Several tools are used to create, restore, and maintain a variety of open habitat types including grassland, shrubland, and young forests on public WMAs across Massachusetts to meet habitat goals. Tools include: forest cutting, mowing and mulching, invasive plant management, and prescribed fire.
The Division’s mandate is to conserve the full diversity of native wildlife species and that was the most enjoyable part of John’s job. Once it is determined that a conservation need exists on a WMA, and biologists identify where they can best enhance conditions, they get to work. John’s job was to coordinate with district supervisors and other biologists, design projects and then get them contracted out addressing the whole spectrum. There is much overlap between management for game species, such as ruffed grouse, American woodcock, wild turkey and non-game threatened and endangered species.
“What we have always tried to do at MassWildlife is to take the ecosystem approach, as opposed to saying ok, we are going to do grouse management here, endangered moths there and over there help that species. We really try to avoid that and take a more systems-oriented approach” said John.
“The Fish & Wildlife Board long ago approved state-wide habitat goals for state wildlife lands with specific amounts of grassland, scrubland, young forest and old forest habitat to make sure they had the full diversity of habitats in place to provide good hunting opportunities and to provide habitat for threatened and endangered species as well. They often merge really nicely and it’s a great thing to see. Frequently there are species overlaps with various habitat types, such as game bird and songbird benefits in young forest areas, and game birds and native pollinators such as endangered bees and moths in shrubland areas, especially barrens habitats like at Montague Plains WMA”. John’s focus was on the habitat types that were most lacking in the State.
His work over the past decade focused on expanding grassland habitats for rare pollinators and threatened songbirds like grasshopper sparrow (these grasslands also provide courtship areas for woodcock, feeding grounds for grouse and turkey poults, and fawning sites for white-tailed deer), restoring globally rare shrubland barrens where prescribed fire supports multiple threatened and endangered species (and also provides excellent feeding areas for ruffed grouse on abundant scrub oak acorns), as well as young forest, in particular aspen forest regeneration.
“During the last decade or so, MassWildlife does between 1,000 and 2,000 acres a year of active management projects on the ground requiring coordination among the various districts and the Westboro staff. District supervisors are critical to have on board for they are responsible for the properties in their district”. John always tried to work closely with the district managers to make sure they are on the same page. He heaped praise on all five district managers.
Habitat projects here in the Berkshires where John was involved included aspen regeneration work on Stafford Hill WMA in Cheshire, abandoned field reclamation at the Gene Moran WMA and aspen and orchard work on the Peru WMA. One big project site is on Fox Den WMA in Middlefield. Brian Hawthorne, MassWildlife Habitat Planning Coordinator, ran the 35- acre aspen regeneration project at the Fox Den WMA in 2008 with direct design input from Dick DeGraaf, long time wildlife biologist with the US Forest Service. (DeGraaf is the author of New England Wildlife: Habitat, Natural History, and Distribution; Landowner’s Guide to Wildlife Habitat: Forest Management for the New England Region and at least 4 other books, which serve as the foundation of landscape habitat used by MassWildlife.
Other local projects included the young forest cutting at the Farmington River WMA in Otis (David Scarpitti from the Westborough Field Headquarters oversaw a 20-acre cut there about 8 years ago). They are preparing another 20- acre cut adjacent to that one. “There has been incredible deer use of the Otis cut” he said.
Under Scanlon’s management, they did habitat work at the Maple Hill WMA in West Stockbridge, and a new young forest project in Ashfield-Hawley is now being done by Fletcher Clark from the Westborough Field Headquarters.
“A dozen years ago, when we first started to work on Fox Den WMA’s combination of abandoned orchards and aspen regeneration, Brian did the contracting and worked long winter hours with a local logging crew on that project”. John is happy with all of the work he’s done with MassWildlife, but in terms of individual projects, “The wildlife response at Fox Den exceeded our highest expectations producing some of the most awesome covers in the state. The aspen at Fox Den is on moist ground, with some adjacent wetlands, which is highly productive for American woodcock, ruffed grouse, wild turkey, black bear, whitetail deer and moose”.
This past year they went back to that same site of the original 35 acres that Brian Hawthorne worked on a dozen years ago. This time they regenerated 8-10 acres of it to get the second age class of aspen started. They also did some work to get the orchard open and on 50 adjacent acres they did a pretty heavy cut of aspen and northern hardwoods. That work was overseen by Tom Wansleben, (who worked for Scanlon as a habitat biologist). In September, only 3 months later, there were a number of turkey dust sites, as well as plenty of non-game species and song birds. If someone wants to see ruffed grouse, woodcock, moose, whitetail deer and bear in our area, that would be John’s first choice recommendation. “It was a prime example of how a well-designed project can succeed so quickly. Brian Hawthorne did such a tremendous job, and now Tom Wansleben is following up”, he said.
Rich Pantermehl, heavy equipment operator, worked the whole winter there. It was so thick and isolated they had to do burns all winter long. “For aspen regeneration you have to cut heavy to stimulate root suckering. You need enough direct sunlight to warm the soil to the point where the shallow aspen roots will sprout. Fox Den is living proof of just how well a system can respond if you are doing the right treatment at the right time”, said John.
In the February Fish & Wild Board Meeting, DFW Director Mark Tisa announced that Brian Hawthorne, out of the Dalton Office (since 2004) has been promoted to MassWildlife Habitat Program Manager replacing John. Brian has been the Habitat Planning Coordinator since 2015 working for John and coordinating the statewide effort in habitat planning.
Brian Hawthorne
Brian will be overseeing the habitat program for the agency statewide. Since the habitat biologists and restoration ecologists in the program spend most of their time in the field, he expects to be doing a fair amount of “managing by driving around” as well as continuing to telework. He’ll be keeping his office in Dalton, and will certainly be making many trips to Westborough Field Headquarters once we are past our current pandemic restrictions. “John (Scanlon) built an excellent program in his decades of work for the Division, and the team I am picking up from him is an extraordinary group of experienced professionals” said Hawthorne.
We extend our congratulations to John Scanlon for the job well done and wish him a long and happy retirement. To Brian Hawthorne we congratulate him too for the well-deserved promotion. We are glad that he will stay in our district and wish him the very best in his new position.
Readers are surely aware that there currently is a furor over the necessity for MassWildlife to increase its license fees. I hope you picked up on the 1,000 to 2,000 acres of active habitat management projects a year. Such important projects didn’t even exist 26 years ago, when the last fee increase was implemented.