Chapter 4 Habitats
Priority Conservation Action, Examples of Focal Species or Focal Habitats
• Use landowner incentives to promote extending rotation lengths for timber.
• Give high priority to protecting movement corridors that allow dispersal between habitat blocks, especially as development and roadways fragment the few remaining large tracts of habitat. Maintaining and restoring connections between habitat blocks are critical, not only for allowing adjustments in range in response to climate change, but also to maintain population resilience and adaptability more generally.
• Give priority to restoring connections that are lost due to construction of four-lane highways and other roads that create nearly impassible barriers for all animals except those capable of flight.
• Direct county- and state-level land use planning to minimize development within large, unfragmented tracts of forests. This would be most appropriate and effective in the regions that are, as yet, not heavily developed, including Montgomery, Stanly, Randolph and Richmond counties in the southern Piedmont, and the northern tier counties of Surry, Stokes, Rockingham, Caswell, Person, and Granville.
• Concentrate planning for future infrastructure (roads, water lines, etc.) closer to existing development and avoid dissecting larger tracks of unfragmented forest.
• Make attempts to provide large core areas of forest and to connect isolated patches of forests. Cooper (2000) recommends that core areas be at least 16,000 acres in size to produce viable populations of forest-interior birds, like the Scarlet Tanager. Large core areas will be important for reptiles like the Eastern Box Turtle and Timber Rattlesnake, which suffer high mortality when crossing roads. Scarlet Tanager Eastern Box Turtle Timber Rattlesnake
References are located at the end of this document.
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2025 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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