Response of breeding songbirds to vegetation management in conifer plantations established in boreal mixedwoods

We examined the response of breeding songbird communities 11 years after four vegetation management treatments were applied. Post-treatment vegetation was characterized by manually interpreting large-scale aerial photography and estimating proportional cover of eight vegetation classes. Songbird abundance was assessed by territory mapping. Using GIS layers, number of registrations and average vegetation proportions were compared among treatments. Ordination of the relative abundance of the 11 most frequent bird species suggested differences between Vision (R) and untreated areas. These results show that effects of vegetation management on songbirds may be more persistent than previous studies suggest and that monitoring should continue.