ABSTRACT
Managing forests to produce a desirable mix of forest resources, including timber products and wildlife species, requires an understanding of how animals respond to habitat in forests. Habitat provided within and among stands (units of homogeneous forest vegetation used as the basis for management) over a landscape (a complex mosaic of interacting patches including forest stands) can have significant effects on the abundance and distribution of animal species. Management strategies aimed at long-term population change are most likely to succeed if they alter habitat quantity, quality, and/or distribution. Knowing how species select habitat can provide clues as to what habitat elements to provide. Habitat elements are those bits and pieces of a forest important to many species, such as vertical structure, dead wood, tree size, plant species, and forage. We will cover these in more detail in Chapter 4.
