Our dead logs bring all the birds to the park

The greenbelt has a shortage of dead logs on the ground, so we decided to take it into our own hands to put more of them out there. At the beginning of the year, we laid out some dead logs ground in various places around the greenbelt. This picture shows a log that a pileated woodpecker had pecked through. These ‘nursing logs’ provide food for birds like the woodpecker.

Believe it or not, trees in the forest still serve important functions after they die. Standing dead trees and downed logs on the ground play an important role in ecosystems by providing wildlife habitat, cycling nutrients, aiding plant regeneration, decreasing erosion and influencing drainage, soil moisture and carbon storage. Unfortunately, there is a shortage of these dead trees in the greenbelt because of the logging that occured about 100 years ago. Because all of the conifer trees that would have died in the forest were cut down, we added our own wood to the forest in places like this (see below) to encourage some of the ecosystem services that dead trees would normally provide.