The Latest Turkey Research
The Role that Habitat and Predators Play in Turkey-Nesting
Success
  Editor’s
Note: What have scientists learned about turkeys and
turkey habitat that can help us understand turkeys better,
learn how to provide better habitat for them and find
out why and when they gobble? State conservation agencies
across the United States currently have conducted research
projects in these areas with the help of the National
Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF), the federal government
and other conservation organizations. To learn the latest
information, we’ve talked with Tom Hughes, senior
wildlife biologist for the NWTF (www.nwtf.org).
The University of Tennessee has conducted a research
project to determine what effect wildlife practices
like thinning and burning have on neo-tropical migrant
songbird species. The information gathered will determine
if thinning and burning for turkeys detrimentally impacts
the songbirds’ habitat, especially the songbirds
that seem to do best in forest cover.
“We’d like to actively manage national
forestlands for wild turkeys and make the habitat more
diverse with numbers of early successional plant mixes,”
Hughes emphasizes. “The Un iversity
of Tennessee created a number of thinning and burning
plots, recorded the number of turkey nests they found
in these  active
study areas and monitored the activity of the neo-tropical
songbird species there to learn what effect this type
of management would have on them. The overall effect
of active turkey management was very positive on many
of the songbird species, and some of the songbirds actually
thrived on the edges of these newly-created openings.
We learned from this study that managing wild lands
for turkeys wasn’t only beneficial to the wild
turkey, but also to songbird species that never had
been thought to thrive in this type of habitat.”
Tomorrow: The American Chestnut
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