Capercaillie (<em>Tetrao urogallus</em> L.) habitats in managed Finnish forests – the current status, threats and possibilities

Abstract

To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Forest Sciences of the University of Joensuu, for public criticism in auditorium N100, Yliopistokatu 7, on 5 th June, 2009 at 12 o'clock noon.

Clearcutting forestry and Eurasian boreal forest grouse: Long-term monitoring of sympatric capercaillie Tetrao urogallus and black grouse T. tetrix reveals unexpected effects on their population performances

“…Although this may hold true regarding the influence of agricultural land, our results do not support the latter finding, as breeding success in CAP did not decrease with increasing loss and fragmentation of old forest. Instead, our results concur more with recent reports from Finland: a steep decline of CAP during 1965-1988 could not be explained by a proportional increase in younger forest (Sirkiä et al, 2010;Miettinen, 2009), on the basis of analyses of time-series data on the landscape scale, concluded that the long-term decline of CAP had stopped in the 1990s. He and co-workers (Miettinen et al, 2010) reported extensive use of middle-aged pine and spruce plantations by both adult birds and broods -a result very much in agreement with our findings.…”

Evaluating forest management intensity on an umbrella species: Capercaillie persistence in central Europe

“…Our results are in contrast with the findings of studies conducted in the boreal zone (Miettinen, 2009;Wegge and Rolstad, 2011); they observed that capercaillie were tolerant to clearcutting across the landscape because capercaillie were also able to use open canopy middle-aged plantations (>30 years old) with bilberry ground cover. The findings of these studies cannot necessarily be applied to central Europe or the Southern and Eastern Carpathians, which are all outside the boreal zone.…”

“…Similarly, in western and central Europe, a decline of capercaillie populations also has been linked to habitat loss through fragmentation and logging (Storch, 2007a). In contrast, recent evidence from boreal forests indicates that the capercaillie is relatively tolerant to changes in forest management regimes and populations will persist in the long term, even in landscapes with large-scale clearcutting (Miettinen, 2009;Wegge and Rolstad, 2011). However, capercaillie distribution in boreal forests is continuous and not as fragmented as in other areas of Europe (Storch, 2007a), and boreal forest regeneration patterns and dynamics is different compared to temperate regions of Europe.…”

Are the declining trends in forest grouse populations due to changes in the forest age structure? A case study of Capercaillie in Finland

“…Fragmentation of mature forests might have led to situation where some species traditionally connected to older forest classes (e.g. Capercaillie, Swenson and Angelstam, 1993;Angelstam, 2004) nowadays seemingly avoid them, most likely because the extent of a species' home range and the extent of the mature forest area do not match (Mykrä et al, 2000;Miettinen et al, 2005Miettinen et al, , 2008Miettinen, 2009). However, this seems to be fairly recent phenomenon: for instance in the Northern Finland, the preference of mature stands for Capercaillie lekking sites was still clearly visible in 1985 (Helle et al, 1989).…”

“…impoverishment of habitat's physiognomy, decreased mosaic-like variability, patch size and/or connectivity) are more important than the decline in forest age (Helle et al, 1987;Lindén et al, 2000;Quevedo et al, 2006). It has been suggested, for example, that in the Northern Finland the understorey cover in mature forests may have become too scarce and monotonous for Capercaillie (Miettinen, 2009). In contrast, in some very dense forest stands thinning may create space for large-sized Capercaillie males for winter roosting (Thiel et al, 2007) or for lekking site displaying (Rolstad and Wegge, 1989a;Rolstad et al, 2007).…”