If you were flying over Central PA...

 

…you would have a great view of the distinct features that define its landscape. You would see patches of farmland, long ridgelines and valleys, dense forests and woodlands, all veined with rivers and creeks.

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What you wouldn’t see, though, are any county, municipal or property lines. These invisible boundaries are important for many reasons and often determine if and how land is divided and used. Sometimes land is divided in a way that disconnects, or fragments, a large natural landscape. This fragmentation prevents wildlife from moving and migrating and thriving naturally on their own because nature is dynamic and constantly in motion. Water moves from the hills into the valleys and beyond. Plants send out seeds and pollen to colonize new areas. Animals move back and forth to find food, cover, and places to raise their young. And all life requires the ability to migrate to a new place when their current habitat becomes inhospitable (one is example can be seen here, in The Nature Conservancy's migrations in motion model).

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If you were walking through the woods...

 

…you would see tall trees standing in a green carpet of ferns and grasses, bordered by thickets of shrubs, like honeysuckle. But what is different? Those who have been walking through the local woods for decades have noticed that the sights and sounds of nature throughout Central PA are quieter and more still now than in the past. This lack of liveliness signals that the woods, wildlife, and waterways are becoming more and more unhealthy and unbalanced. Indeed, over the past 50 years or so we’ve lost nearly 3 billion birds, even backyard birds like the Dark-Eyed Junco and Blue Jay. Others like the Northern Bobwhite have all but vanished from the Central PA landscape.

 

What is missing from the woods today that supported wildlife yesterday? For starters, young and old forests and complex understories. While a carpet of fern may look inviting to us, it isn’t to wildlife, and exotic shrubs like honeysuckle do not provide the benefits to wildlife that native species do. Today forests across the state are mostly the same age and young forests are especially rare. These and other disappearing habitats support the last remaining vestiges of the natural landscape that we know and cherish.

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In Central PA, a stronghold still exists to support many of these declining wildlife species. This distinctly rare and important area is known as the Scotia Barrens, which lies within PA State Game Lands 176 and sits next to State College and Penn State University Park. The Scotia Barrens composes part of a region of woodlands in the heart of Central PA that includes the headwaters of Spring Creek and the Little Juniata River, and holds one of the state’s largest sections of a rare young forest habitat known as pitch pine-scrub oak barrens.