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Following the Forest GMF Style
Great Mountain Forest’s 6,300-acre expanse is, in a sense, one of Connecticut’s broadest highways. Save the rare maintenance vehicle or Sunday stroller, though, it is no conduit for humans, but rather the fast lane – or a rest stop – for the abundant flora and fauna of the New England woodlands.
That highway is not isolated to Norfolk and Falls Village. It is part of an ecological interstate that runs from the uplands of the lower Hudson Valley to the northern forests of Quebec. The Follow the Forest initiative, a collective effort between the Housatonic Valley Association, the Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative, and many other regional groups, seeks to connect and protect this dark green thoroughfare, and GMF is a vital junction on a route that carries moose, bears, bobcats, salamanders, seed pods and beyond across an increasingly fragmented landscape.
The project recently received $30,000 in grant funding to further its mission, which combines citizen science, expert input, and regional partnerships to aid in wildlife mobility along a “corridor” that follows protected forests from the Hudson Highlands through the Berkshire and Taconic ranges before connecting with the Adirondack and Green Mountains and ultimately Canada.
Windrow Road approaching the GMF Visitor Center in early December. Even quiet roads like this can pose an obstruction to wildlife mobility between large forest cores. Photo by Alec Linden.
“Connectivity” is the concept of keeping “core” habitats bridged through “linkages” – sites where animals are able to traverse an anthropogenic boundary from one core to another. Many animals depend on mobility for vital reasons, such as seeking food or water or mating and reproduction, but the isolation of habitats from one another impacts humans downstream as well. According to the World Wildlife Fund, habitat fragmentation stemming from development has impacts beyond local ecosystem collapse, including degrading soil health and polluting fresh water.
Large and connected refuges of wildland that enable animals and plants to move freely are considered havens of “resilience” amid increasing pressures from climate change and development, which is an ecosystem’s ability to survive and thrive amidst disturbance. The corridor that runs up the highland spine from southern New York state to Canada connects an extensive swath of North America’s eastern woods, regarded to be the largest stretch of intact temperate mixed and deciduous forest in the world, according to Follow the Forest.
GMF’s territory makes up what the Follow the Forest initiative identifies as “core forest habitat” – a tract of protected woodland, 250 acres or greater, that is not disrupted by human alterations like roads or farmland. In addition to GMF’s conserved lands, thousands more acres of protected state-owned highland forest spread across the Canaan Mountain massif. Far exceeding the size qualification, the extensive, contiguous, and diverse forest contained within and directly abutting GMF’s boundaries is part of a “key stronghold” of climate resilience, according to HVA Conservation Director Julia Rogers.
During a recent interview, Rogers addressed the value in GMF’s longstanding commitment to conserving forestland. “Without that legacy,” she said, “I would predict that there is a strong likelihood that parts of [the forest] would be developed and we would have a much smaller core forest.”
Big cores, she explained, are fundamental as they are able to withstand disruption and damage more so than smaller tracts of land. “Larger cores are going to be more resilient to all the impacts of climate change,” she said, including more extreme and unpredictable weather patterns, which may topple trees that have less protection.
Plus, GMF has elevation on its side: “As we think about species who are going to need to move either north or upward in elevation as a response to climate change, Great Mountain Forest is going to serve as a key climate refuge.”
“That connectivity with the protected lands further south and lower in elevation is so critical to Great Mountain Forest serving as a key part of the Follow the Forest initiative,” Rogers added.
The property lines of GMF, outlined in red, with the surrounding wildlife linkages to other core forest habitat demarcated by purple ovals. Shaded ovals indicate sites that have been assessed in person by a community scientist. Map courtesy of Stacy Deming/Housatonic Valley Association.
Not just a stronghold, GMF is also surrounded by linkages to other protected habitats. These sites, identified by purple ovals on the Follow the Forest map, were initially identified by computer modeling, but many have been visited by volunteer citizen scientists who contributed their own observations to the data pool.
Stacy Deming, HVA’s GIS manager who is behind Follow the Forest’s intricate and user-friendly story map, also joined the interview. She spoke with pride about the collaboration with locals. “I’d say we’ve really done a lot of work with community scientists to come up with these,” she said of the map tags detailing each linkage. “I feel like they’re a better display of what the linkages really are.”
Rogers echoed Deming’s sentiment: “What’s really cool about getting community scientists out there is that they have information that we can’t gather from a computer.” Plus, involvement begets interest, she said, noting that the project promotes engagement with the idea of wildlife connectivity as volunteers inspect these linkage sites firsthand.
Both Rogers and Deming agree that a communal approach to preserving connected wildlife corridors is essential in southern New England, a region abounding with roads, property lines, and town borders.
“None of us can do it alone,” said Rogers. “We need each other. And what’s fun about Follow the Forest is that it unites all of us under something that’s exciting, right?”
GMF’s Resident Moose are the Subject of Scientific and Photographic Study
Great Mountain Forest is home to 20 of Connecticut’s 100 or so moose. Yet most people who visit the forest will never spot one. That’s because despite their significant stature and status as New England’s largest land mammal, these ungainly ungulates—members of the order of hoofed mammals— move through the forest with remarkable stealth and agility.
Wildlife photographer Stephen Schumacher, however, who has been documenting GMF’s diverse fauna for eight years, has captured GMF’s resident moose on multiple occasions. And Ed Faison, senior ecologist at the Highstead Foundation, a regional conservation organization based in Redding, CT, has studied GMF moose to better understand how they impact temperate forests.
Under the Microscope
Faison, the lead author of a recent paper on the effect of moose and white-tailed deer in New England on forest regeneration, explains “Moose have been studied for decades in the boreal forest, in Canada and Scandinavia and Alaska. So a lot is known about what they do to forests up there, but very little is known about what’s going on down here [in the temperate forest].”
Moose are relative newcomers to Connecticut. In fact, there is no hard evidence to suggest that the species had a stable breeding population in the state until the 20th century.“GMF is a great study site because it’s one of the few spots in Connecticut with moose, it supports long-term research and is actively managed” explains Faison.
Faison along with Steve DeStefano from the United States Geological Survey Collaborative Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Massachusetts spent 15 years monitoring the browsing (foraging) habits of moose and deer to determine their impacts on the abundance and composition of a re-growing forest in a disturbed woodland site, such as an area that had been cleared for timber harvesting. GMF proved an ideal study site.
A moose that eats up to forty or fifty pounds of food per day can certainly produce notable effects on the reemergent trees. Faison and DeStafano found that rather than restrict the forest’s ability to regrow, as prior scholarship had suggested, browsing’s primary impact was to direct different plant species to succeed in the disturbed environment, without substantial sacrifices to overall biomass or biodiversity.
The study, Resilience and Alternative Successional Trajectories in Temperate Forests Exposed to Two Large Herbivores published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management in June, concluded that the moose and deer did not significantly impact forest resiliency, or its ability to regrow after disturbance.
However, the scientists also concluded that the moose and deer’s feeding habits did affect the forest’s composition. The browsed sites showed markedly reduced deciduous tree growth. That’s because the animals favored deciduous species, allowing white pine (Pinus strobus) to grow more abundantly in the browsed stands.
Faison inspects a partially enclosed plot that excludes moose but permits deer. Photo provided.
Through the Camera’s Lens
Rather than their impacts on the forest, wildlife photographer Stephen Schumacher is interested in documenting the animals themselves, which is no easy feat.
Despite being New England’s largest land mammal, moose are seldom seen. And even though their antlers can span up to five feet across, these ungainly looking, yet agile animals manage to negotiate the dense understory with remarkable ease.
“I’ve seen moose going through mountain laurel that is thicker than thick,” remarked Schumacher during a recent conversation. “It’s hard enough for me to get through there.”
Yet Schumacher persists. “This is a lifelong project,” he says. “I still want to get my quintessential moose in early morning or late afternoon sun getting lit up like a Christmas tree.”
Not only does their reticent nature make moose encounters a challenge. But a moose that feels threatened can kick, charge or stomp, particularly a cow protecting her calf.
Schumacher’s dogged pursuit of moose has meant he’s had his share of run-ins with the woodlands giants, and the pictures to prove it. On August 27 this year, while riding his bike, Schumacher spotted a looming shape emerging from the edge of the woods. Jumping off his bike, and struggling to keep his hands steady as he prepped his camera for the shot, Schumacher uttered a low guttural sound to draw the huge bull’s gaze.
Normally, the photographer wouldn’t vocalize to the animals, but since this was before rutting season, he said the bull was calm. “His ears were up… he wasn’t posturing with his antlers. He was relaxed.”
To Schumacher’s amazement, the bull offered a reply. “He turned his head broadside, and he looked back at me, and he answered me back.”
“It sent chills up my spine,” he continued, after a pause.
“Seeing that bull, that’s probably the coolest thing I’ll ever encounter. And I’ve been able to photograph wolves out in Yellowstone,” he said.
Schumacher has been tromping around GMF’s hinterlands for eight years, and he also monitors a number of trail cameras he set up around the forest, which gives him rare access to documenting moose as well as other mammals in the wild. Once, five years ago, two deer walked by one of his cameras and for a split second, the outline of their antlers matched perfectly. “Those guys were actually twins,” Schumacher said with a grin. Schumacher’s cameras have also captured fishers, martins, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and “lots of bears—some giant bears.”
“I don’t take any of that for granted,” he said, emphasizing his gratitude to GMF staff for allowing him the access to do what he does. “It’s like getting a golden ticket in Willy Wonka.”
Despite his hands quaking with trepidation, Schumacher managed to capture a few images of a moose cow and her calf. Photo: Stephen Schumacher
Schumacher’s photographs and trail camera footage can be found on instagram @sds.wildlifeimages.
Future Forests in the Making: Climate-Smart Thinning at Great Mountain Forest
As New England experiences increasingly extreme weather, including hotter and wetter summers, keeping forests healthy and resilient to pests and disease is an ongoing challenge. Work has begun implementing Connecticut Land Conservation Council’s (CLCC) Climate Smart Land Stewardship Grant at GMF! Great Mountain Forest recently began a pre-commercial thinning project, which is a forest management practice that involves removing trees from a young, dense stand before they reach a size where they can be commercially harvested.
Managing Competition
In areas at GMF where trees were harvested 20 years ago, young trees have grown back fiercely, racing to become the future forest. Most of these new trees will end up being shaded out underneath their stronger brethren or succumbing to damage or disease. By applying management methods that support a diversity of tree and animal species and provide more resilience to pests and other disturbances, our foresters are controlling that competition to enhance traits we hope to promote.
We start by marking a “pre-commercial thinning,” or PCT, in three stands that are approximately 20 years old. “Thinning” means removing the trees that are competing with those we want to keep strong and healthy. “Pre-commercial” means that we are implementing this treatment when the trees are too small to be sold as wood products, which is where funding directed by CLCC comes in to support this work. We chose trees spaced on average 10 feet from one another, giving them the light they need to grow quickly when they are “released” from competition by this treatment.
Stand marked before treatment (note very high density of stems).
Stand after thinning treatment (only marked individuals remain standing).
Shaping the Future Forest
In selecting which trees to keep, there are a few things we keep in mind. The first is health and form. We choose trees that are going to last: those that aren’t suffering from disease, that have stable trunks and full crowns, and that have no obvious wounds.
Unfortunately, we have to remove most of the beech in these young stands. American Beech, or Fagus Grandifolia, is currently under a dual attack from beech leaf disease and beech bark disease. Nearly all of the beech in our forest are succumbing to one or both of these diseases. While we save any individuals that seem to display resistance, we know we cannot count on the majority of them as our future canopy.
The other factor we consider is species composition. Presently, these stands are almost entirely beech and black birch (Betula lenta). We therefore want to promote the other species within the stand to make it as diverse as we can. Tulip poplar, white, yellow and grey birch, ash, cottonwood, and oak are growing in these stands too, and we select for them to prevent the stands from becoming near-monocultures of black birch. While there’s nothing wrong with black birch, aiming for as much diversity as possible helps to increase stand resilience and support additional non-tree species in the forest. We’re also making sure to leave species like serviceberry and highbush blueberry. While these species won’t be our canopy trees, the fruits they produce are important food sources for birds.
Looking below the canopy, the effects of this treatment will also be seen on the forest floor. In this stage of competition, the amount of light that can reach the ground is quite limited. The trees are so densely packed that nearly nothing can grow beneath them. But by thinning the trees, we are allowing that light back in.
Forester Emeritus Jody Bronson inspired this project through his implementation of a similar PCT on a smaller scale over many years. What he saw after thinning was an understory full of not only herbaceous plants, but a new cohort of tree seedlings, particularly oaks, a group of species that has wonderful ecological value but can be difficult to regenerate. Now, should an ice storm come through and knock out the canopy trees, that young cohort is waiting in the wings to take off and swiftly become a forest again instead of having to compete for establishment.
Great Mountain Forest’s 2025 summer interns got to mark this treatment, selecting which trees to cut and which to leave. From the first week, they started thinking like foresters, making decisions that they would not see the full effects of for decades.
We are so grateful to CLCC for funding this work, which has provided young foresters with unique learning opportunities, added resilience to our forest, and created an excellent demonstration of sustainable forest stewardship.
Funding for this project was paid for by the Climate Smart Farming: Agriculture and Forestry Grant. Funding awarded and administered by the Connecticut Department of Agriculture and the Connecticut Land Conservation Council.
GMF’s 77th Cohort of Forestry Interns
Ren Cattafe
Hello! My name is Ren Cattafe, and I am an undergraduate student at UMass Amherst studying forest ecology and conservation. I grew up in eastern Massachusetts, spending a lot of time in forests, which fostered my love of nature early on and influenced my decision to pursue a career in natural resources. I’m interested in sustainable logging practices, promoting forest resilience through silviculture, and increasing community accessibility and knowledge of forested areas. During my studies I have also had the opportunity to participate in active hemlock woolly adelgid research, which I plan to continue in the coming academic year.
I feel extremely grateful to be working with GMF this summer. Not only has it been an incredible learning opportunity, but a chance to do work that serves a real purpose.
Within the first week, my fellow interns and I supported research that involved marking 30+ acres of trees with the goal of strengthening the dominant cohort and the understory. This experience has enhanced my ability to perceive and interpret forested landscapes in a manner that can’t be achieved in a classroom setting. I am thrilled that such research is supported here, and that both industry and science can coexist within the same space.
Will Watkins
Hello, my name is Will Watkins. I am a rising senior at North Carolina State University studying forest management with a concentration in ecology and a minor in environmental education. I first got into forestry as a degree because I grew up participating in boy scouts and spent a lot of time outdoors. The summer before I started my freshman year at college I was able to go on a special backpacking trip out in New Mexico where I learned about and helped with some forestry and conservation efforts. This inspired me to pursue forestry at school. Now that I have had some schooling and this internship, I know I made the right choice.
I was born and raised in North Carolina and had never heard of Great Mountain Forest, nor did I know much about the northwest corner of Connecticut. But as soon as I ran across this opportunity online I was excited and applied immediately. It checked all my boxes, plus it was in a part of the country that I have never been to? That’s great! Even now, after working here for a month, I am still slowly learning more about both GMF and the area.
So far, we have marked stands of trees for a pre-commercial thinning and we have made some plots in a stand of barberry to get an inventory of the understory. That is only a small bit of what we have done so far and what we will eventually get to do later in the summer. I am very much looking forward to the rest of the summer.
Ronald Law
Hello, my name is Ronald Law, and I am a 2025 summer intern at Great Mountain Forest. My interest in forestry began quite late in life as I was originally studying computer science. After some time however, my disinterest in the field became apparent to me and I decided I had to quit.
Six months later, I started working at a lawn care company, eventually becoming a tree and shrub specialist. Though I enjoyed my time there, I slowly came to realize the elements in our environment that were changing dramatically, resulting in the death and weakening of numerous plants under my care. As unusually warm winters became the norm, and invasive pests became more prevalent, I realized I wanted to work in a position that was more proactive than reactive when it came to the health of our environment. So I decided to return to school and pursue environmental studies, which eventually led me to my internship at Great Mountain Forest.
Healthy forests, healthy people – and healthy ticks?
The hills are alive in Northwest Connecticut, but it’s not all birdsong and snowdrops: the blacklegged tick has shaken off its winter torpor, and now crawls in droves through the understory, spreading disease and myths in equal measure.
Dr. Scott Williams, Chief Scientist and Head of the Department of Environmental Science and Forestry at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES), a state organization spearheading research on tick-borne diseases, dismissed two commonly held misconceptions about the tiny, dangerous insect: “They don’t fly. They don’t drop out of trees.” Williams advised that rather than worry about the branches overhead, think low and keep your ankles covered. “They crawl up from the ground for the most part, or [from] a few inches off the ground.”
Demystifying tick behavior and pathogen transmission yields surprising insights into how to manage disease levels in our region: in a healthy forest, more ticks might actually equal less disease, Williams explained.
Debunking Myths
Blacklegged ticks (also widely known as deer ticks) and Lyme disease are commonly misunderstood components of the New England forest, starting with the illness’ origin story. Conspiracy theories abound speculating where it began, with an especially persistent and oft-debunked claim that it leaked from a government research facility on Plumb Island.
But reputable research has shown that the disease has been circulating in the northern hemisphere for millennia. One of the bacterium responsible for causing Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi, was detected in Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,000 year-old mummy found in the Eastern Alps in the 1990s. A study conducted by the Yale School of Public Health in 2017 traced B. burgdorferi back to North American forests of 60,000 years ago, meaning the bacterium was resident in our woods long before the earliest human inhabitants arrived.
Closer to home
Deer ticks and Lyme disease are as Connecticut as New Haven pizza, with one of our picturesque coastal towns lending its name to the ailment after a cluster of cases there in the 1970s lead to its identification as a unique condition. The state remains positioned in the very heart of tick country, and the Icebox of Connecticut, which previously benefitted from the protection of its harsh winters, is losing its defenses as the cold season continues to warm up.
“We’re not trying to scare people from being outside, we’re trying to educate people on when the various stages [of ticks] are active – what’s tick habitat and what’s not,” Williams said. For instance, a field of high grass, commonly regarded as a tick haven, is actually largely inhospitable to the bugs, as they desiccate quickly in a dry environment. “That’s kind of a desert for ticks,” Williams explained.
The most “ticky” habitat “is really that edge where your lawn meets the forest,” he said, and when it comes to getting bitten, it’s often a matter of timing.
When to watch out
While adult deer ticks are active now, Williams explained that May, June, and early July are the months when most infections occur since that’s when both humans and the nymphal stage of deer ticks are likely to be active outdoors. Although the adult ticks wandering the undergrowth and brush now can certainly transmit the pathogen, it’s the nymphs that are “the really problematic guys,” Williams said, in part because they are small and hard to detect, and also because in spring, “human activity and tick activity in the nymphal stages coincide.”
A white-tailed deer in the forest. Photo: Mike Zarfos
Host competency and the dilution hypothesis
Active ticks, active humans, and an abundance of both yield higher bite rates, thus contributing to more infections. However, Williams explained that the species present in an ecosystem can have significant impacts on the spread of tick-borne pathogens to humans.
A surplus of white-tailed deer upon the landscape, for example, is often thought to correlate to more tick-borne illness. While a large deer population will often support a high concentration of ticks, deer are a “dead-end host” for the bacterium, meaning they don’t transfer the pathogen back into the ticks.
Mice, however, are “competent hosts.” The concept of host competency is the ability of a reservoir host species (animals that carry and spread disease-causing pathogens) to infect the ticks with pathogens, which small rodents are highly adept at whereas larger animals are less so. When deer are plentiful on a landscape, “you typically have high tick abundances with lower infections with the various pathogens,” Williams said.
The reservoir host species of B. burgdorferi that actually infects the ticks with the pathogen are small rodents, especially the white-footed mouse which is common to the Litchfield Hills. When fewer deer, and other medium sized mammals, are available, Williams explained that the ticks will then be forced to feed primarily on mice, which will support a smaller population of ticks within which the pathogen is much more concentrated.
CAES team conducts Lyme disease research with mice in Woodbury. Photo: Mike Zarfos
Healthy forests, healthy people
In a healthy ecosystem with a spectrum of animal species, ticks aren’t forced to rely on these highly competent hosts for a blood meal. Williams explained that this scenario, in a species-diverse forest, describes what disease ecologists call the dilution hypothesis: “with a diversity of animals, you’re going to see less infection in the ticks because they have so many options to feed.”
The loss of forest diversity can have the opposite effect, Williams said, which is happening across the Northeast due to development and the incursion of invasive species. Several years ago, Williams conducted research on the correlation of Japanese barberry, an invasive shrub, with tick populations; some of the work was done at Great Mountain Forest with the help of GMF forester Jody Bronson. The study found that the dense tangle of undergrowth created by the proliferation of the shrub caused a humid microclimate that not only provided great tick habitat, but enabled them to remain active throughout the day.
Normally, the moisture-dependent ticks might be inactive under a pile of leaves during the heat of the day, Williams said. But the microclimate created by the “monoculture” of invasive brush growth means ticks continue looking for a host “pretty much 24 hours a day.” He clarified that this was not specific to Japanese barberry, but any plant that grows in a monoculture tangle, “which is pretty much what invasives do in our neck of the woods.”
“What we’re trying to push is a healthy, diverse forest, and that’s very applicable to Great Mountain Forest,” Williams said. The goal, he continued, is responsible management: “If you have a healthy, diverse, well-managed forest, you’re going to have a diverse array of wildlife, and as a result you’re going to have a healthier tick population with lower pathogen infection. That’s kind of the bottom line.”
