Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 28, 1993                   TAG: 9305280203
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BUCHANAN                                LENGTH: Medium

FEWER SONGBIRDS RETURNING TO VA.

They lost sight of the bird in the pale-green oak canopy, but the high-pitched call for a mate - "chit, chit, chit" - was all Smith needed to identify it.

"That's an ovenbird. You hardly see it around here anymore," Smith, president of the Roanoke Valley Bird Club, said as he walked along North Creek in the Jefferson National Forest.

More than 75 percent of the forest-dwelling birds breeding in Virginia at this time of year are Neotropical migratory songbirds like the ovenbird, according to wildlife biologists.

But two-thirds of the Neotropical migrant species have shown steady population declines in Virginia since 1980, said Dana Bradshaw, a wildlife biologist for the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

The Jefferson National Forest is trying to protect habitat for the birds and the Shenandoah National Park is studying the bird losses this spring by catching them in nets and banding the adults.

Unlike permanent residents such as cardinals and Carolina wrens or short-distance migrants that winter in Deep South states, these birds get here by traveling thousands of miles from the Neotropics - Central America, South America and the Caribbean Islands.

They survive despite the destruction of habitat by slash-and-burn agriculture in the rain forests, deadly storms and poisoning from herbicides and insecticides banned in the United States but prevalent in the tropics.

They navigate by topographic features such as rivers and mountains, the stars and sun, and some of them lose as much as one-fourth of their body weight during the migration.

They survive threats in the nesting area - egg-eating snakes and raccoons, logging, campers that cut down small trees and cowbirds that take over their nests.

But fewer and fewer are making the trip home.

The population declines are identified by the annual Breeding Bird Survey, in which hundreds of volunteers for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stake out 51 routes used by the birds in Virginia.

The ovenbird, Louisiana waterthrush, scarlet tanager and hooded warbler, for example, are declining an average of 1 percent a year while the black-billed cuckoo is declining about 7 percent a year.

Peter Kirby, Southeast regional director for The Wilderness Society, said many of the declining Neotropical migrants in the region need to breed and find food in large, contiguous tracts of mature forests.

The Blue Ridge Mountain range is one of the few regions in the country in which a significant majority of the breeding Neotropical migrants have been consistently declining since 1966, Kirby said.

National forests provide the best opportunity for protecting their habitat, he said, while fragmentation of the forest by logging and road building causes population declines.

The Jefferson National Forest is trying to preserve the unfragmented habitat by increasing the size of a preserve along the North Creek from 500 acres to 1,825 acres.

For the first time, spokesman David Olson said, the forest's management plan calls for Neotropical migratory songbirds to be the featured wildlife species. Before, wildlife management practices always revolved around a game species - bear, turkey, deer or grouse.

"We're expanding our horizons," said Jefferson wildlife biologist Larry Neuhs. "Timber management used to be our bread and butter, and managing for game species. But more people are interested in the birds and plants, and we're responding to that by managing for birds and endangered species."

But the Appalachian Forest Management Group, a timber industry association, is appealing the plan because it would cause the loss of acreage designated as suitable for logging.

On the conservation side, the Citizens Task Force on National Forest Management is appealing timber sales on the periphery of the proposed preserve.

Wildlife biologists say Neotropicals such as warblers, vireos and flycatchers are some of the best insect controllers, eating tons of insects annually. They also may indicate the health of the environment and draw bird-watchers into the forests.

"Forest fragmentation is believed to be one of the reasons for declining populations," Neuhs said. "But I think the main problem is the lack of habitat on wintering grounds because of slash-and-burn farming. We've been cutting less than 1 percent of our woodlands in the Jefferson National Forest for the last 15 or 20 years."

Smith, the bird club president, said there's not much that can be done about the problems in the impoverished tropics, so the state and federal agencies should do whatever they can do to protect habitat here.

"When you're starving," he said, "it's hard to say, `Gosh, I'll save this forest and go hungry."