The ensuing excitement surrounding Dr. Jones’ (he should make people call
him that!) Cuyahoga County breeding Fish Crow got me thinking.  It
culminated with Bill Whan’s posting with “These are not rarities that may
never be seen again, and crowds of listers need not chase them around as
they establish an urban nest. Only in recent decades have large numbers of
crow species begun to live in cities… Wouldn't it be a shame to delay their
occupations by putting too much pressure on the first inroads made by these
intelligent and wary birds, all for self-gratification?”  Now this is
nothing against Bill Whan, as I find his posts insightful and intelligent,
but this one got me thinking.

As humans, we have a tendency to look at the here and now, and judge things
according to the present.  Sometimes at the expense of what should be and
what will happen.  As a result, we have things like Fish Crows in Ohio where
birders (this whole post will be from a birder’s standpoint, but it is
applicable to other taxa) are excited and encouraging others to exercise
caution to keep from the nest from being abandoned.  We’ll return to these
crows at the end of the post.

Before European settlement, Ohio was a vast forest.  A few prairie pockets
existed, especially in the western part of the state, and numerous beavers
helped created large amounts of small meadows.  Our species richness was
dominated by things like Passenger Pigeon, Scarlet Tanager, Cerulean
Warbler, Cooper’s Hawks and other forest interior birds, with a paucity of
open landscape birds.  After settlement, Ohio was quickly cleared, either
for agriculture or just logged and left.  This allowed new species, prairie
species to invade.  Our state’s avian composition changed from forest
interior birds to open landscape birds dominated the picture.  These would
have included things like Barn Owl, Loggerhead Shrike, Brown-headed Cowbird,
Upland Sandpiper, Lapland Longspur, Horned Larks, Dicksissels and Northern
Bobwhites to establish large populations.  Eventually landscape practices
changed and southern and eastern Ohio slowly began regaining forests. 
Western Ohio saw large monoculture with no edges.  Like the previous times,
this change in the landscape created a shifting in birding.  Our forest
birds began coming back and we lost populations of our open landscape birds.  

Today in Ohio, we lament the loss of widespread, common species and even
state list some of these as Species of Concern, Threatened or Endangered. 
These would include Loggerhead Shrike, Barn Owl, Upland Sandpiper and
Northern Bobwhite.  This leads to an effort to establish and maintain
habitat for these species, along with money to study their declines.  These
species, though, are all common, or at least have healthy populations, in
the core of their range where proper habitat existed pre-European
settlement.  Is  it is better to promote those habitats at the expense of
letting things grow back into large-scale forest habitats?  As we know
habitat is the central to all conservation measures.  With large-scale
forests comes Scarlet Tanagers and Cerulean Warblers.  We will also see a
natural decrease in birds such as Brown-headed Cowbirds and other edge
species that at the moment are hugely over-populated such as Northern
Raccoons, Whitetail Deer and the soon to be Wild Turkey.  All of these
species have negative impacts in their current population levels.  

Ohio’s landscape has been changing since Ohio was formed and it will
continue to change and along with it species composition will continue to
change.  It is up to us, as stewards of the land, to figure out where our
priorities lie.  Is it the species whose ranges are expanding due to human
influence, such as the Cattle Egret, an African immigrant that is listed as
Endangered in Ohio, and the Fish Crow?  The Fish Crow is expanding as a
result of human influence.  If we love Dr. Jones’ crows to death and make
them abandon this nest, will it really matter when a decade or two down the
road we have hundreds of the birds in Ohio.  And what is the impacts this
new species will have on our true native species?  Before they actually
become a well known component of Ohio, do we list them for give them
protection and money for studies?  Or should we focus our efforts on the
species whose habitat was lost 150-200 years ago when Ohio went from forest
to field in a few decades?  

Like I said, this is just food for thought, but I think birds are one of
those groups of organisms that respond quicker to habitat modifications due
to their mobility but the principle stands for all species.  

Andy

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