In 2013, a multi-agency team of Appalachian Mountain Joint Venture partners created or improved more than 12,000 acres of young forest habitat within Pennsylvania’s Golden-winged Warbler Focal Conservation Area. While a majority of this area is located on public lands, more than 4,000 acres represent private lands partnerships.
The partnership (consisting of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, American Bird Conservancy, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania) contacted nearly 4,300 private forest owners in 2013 about enrolling private lands in the NRCS Working Lands for Wildlife program to create Golden-winged Warbler habitat. Working Lands for Wildlife allows landowners to voluntarily participate in an incentive-based effort to restore populations of declining wildlife species, restore product capacity of working lands, and provide regulatory certainty that conservation investments made today will sustain operations over long term. Mailings were sent to landowners in the Golden-winged Warbler Focal Conservation Area whose property met certain criteria, such as elevation, forest cover, and minimum acreage requirements.
To date, Pennsylvania accounts for 81% of all Golden-winged Warbler breeding habitat acres enrolled across the 9 Appalachian states eligible to participate in the Working Lands for Wildlife program. Since the start of the Pennsylvania Golden-winged Warbler Habitat Initiative in 2011, this effort has resulted in 27,971 acres of potential Golden-winged warbler breeding habitat on private (7,645 acres) and public (20,326 acres) lands.
