Land Stewardship 101

With these tips from SVT's Stewardship Staff, you can turn your property into important habitat for our region's wildlife.

Kristin O'Brien, SVT's Conservation Restriction Manager, oversees all of our conservation restrictions (CRs) to ensure their important ecological features remain healthy and undamaged.

Kristin also works with our CR landowners to manage the habitats on their properties. She offers tips for improving the health of grasslands, shrublands, and woodlands so the ecosystems can provide high-quality habitats for our native species.

We believe anyone with even a small plot of land or a simple garden can employ many of Kristin's tips. So, beginning in April 2026, we are sharing her monthly tips with you. If we all work to improve the health of our properties, we'll create a network of high-quality habitats that help our local natural communities thrive.

Have you ever wondered why birch bark peels? Or what those white spots are on glossy buckthorn bark? The answer is lenticels! Lenticels are open pores that allow the exchange of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor between the internal living tissues of a plant and the outside air. They often appear as raised circular, oval, or elongated marks.

For deciduous woody plants, this adaptation allows respiration to occur through the bark in winter and increase growth rate as they are not limited to photosynthesis through their leaves. The downside to lenticels is that they are always open and can be an entry point for fungi, bacteria, and other diseases. Birch trees, however, developed an additional adaptation to protect their lenticels. As a birch tree grows wider, the papery bark peels and falls off. By shedding older bark, and therefore anything growing on the tree such as fungi and lichen, it allows the lenticels to remain clear for gas exchange. 

Lenticels are present on many different plant species and not limited to bark. For instance, lenticels can be found on the roots of mangroves, the skin of fruit like apples and pears, and even potato tubers. Lenticels are an amazing adaptation in plant evolution that allows species to survive low oxygen environments, giving an advantage to pioneer species (such as birches), aiding in fruit development, and other evolutionary advantages. 

Some birches that are native to Masschusetts include Black Birch (Betula lenta), White Birch (Betula papyrifera), Yellow Birch (Betula alleghaniensis), and Gray Birch (Betula populifolia), and River Birch (Betula nigra). These birch trees are vital in supporting wildlife and are host plants to a wide variety of native birds and insects.

Prohibited Plants in Massachusetts

Invasive species (plants, insects, fish, mollusks, mammals, and more) are the second leading cause of habitat destruction after development. Non-native species that thrive outside their native range have no significant predators to keep their populations in check and capitalize available resources. For instance, glossy buckthorn, an invasive shrub, can take over an entire forest understory, outcompeting our native plants. This changes the food and physical space available for our native birds, insects, and other species. 

The MA Invasive Plant Advisory Group (MIPAG) is a collaboration of organizations and professionals charged to provide recommendations to the Commonwealth regarding which plants are invasive. Most recently Japanese angelica tree (Aralia elata) and sapphire berry (Symplocos paniculata) have been added to the MA Prohibited Plant List. 

Fighting Garlic Mustard 

With the arrival of spring comes the emergence of the invasive garlic mustard plant. This biennial can be found in the full shade of a forest or the full sun along a road. Among other issues, the roots of this plant change the soil chemistry, which prevents native plants from growing.

Help fight garlic mustard! If you see this plant on your property, please take action before the white flowers go to seed and spread.

• Pull out the stalks at the base to remove the roots from the ground. 
• Do not put the plant in your garden compost. 
• Place the pulled plants in a paper lawn bag to dry out. 
• For disposal, ask your town’s DPW if it accepts bagged garlic mustard or if you should place it in your trash.

For more information about garlic mustard, visit the website of our colleagues at SuAsCo CISMA.
 

Keep Our Forests Messy

One easy way to improve habitat quality is to leave dead wood as it is. Standing dead trees (snags) and downed wood (logs, sticks etc.) are essential to a healthy ecosystem. 

Some find this visually ‘messy’ and unappealing, but dead trees and downed wood provide nesting locations and food sources, and they can even create a new "niche" in your woods. While a habitat is where an organism lives (address), a niche is how it lives and interacts there (profession). You can learn more about the interaction between species, their habitats, and their niches here.

This diagram does a great job of illustrating three species of warblers and their different niches on the same spruce tree.

A messy forest filled with snags and logs is able to provide countless niches:

 
Snags

• Nesting cavities for owls and other animals
• Food for insects (under the bark)
• Insects are food for woodpeckers and other birds
• Branches at different heights offer perching locations (niches) for different bird species

 Logs

• Fungi (mushrooms) colonize the log, increasing the rate of decomposition
• Decomposition returns nutrients to the soil, further facilitated by bacteria, slugs, ants, lichen, and more
• Decomposing material is consumed by earthworms
• Logs provide burrow and hiding locations for smaller critters
• Twigs and bark can be used by birds to create nests

 
More Resource for Forest Management

• Pennsylvania Forest Seminar Series
• Stewarding Your Forest
• Forestry programs you could join (Chap. 61 Tax Program, Forestry for the Birds)

Questions?

If you have questions about managing your land, please contact Kristin at [email protected].