Humans have a habit of dividing up landscapes, such that ecosystems are arbitrarily carved up along non-ecological lines. In the process of creating our personal habitats of homes and private properties, we draw lines through the often fixed habitats of the wildlife with whom we share our woods.

In western Massachusetts, 54% of forested properties under single ownership are between 3 and 9 acres, with the average ownership property area being 24 acres. While 24 acres, or even 3 acres, can be plenty to satisfy our desires for privacy, recreation, and enjoyment of nature on our own land, many of the animals around us require much larger areas to fulfill their habitat needs.

Mammals are often described by biologists and ecologists as having a “home range”; that is, the area used by an animal for hunting, foraging, breeding, caring for young, and any other behaviors that are integral to the species’ life cycle. The larger the animal, generally the larger its home range. Those elusive hunters, the fisher, for example, require an average of about 4,000 acres (16 sq. km) for females and 7,400 acres (30 sq. km) for males for their home range. Fishers travel widely searching for prey, which includes snowshoe hares, porcupines, deer, and small mammals such as moles, voles, and squirrels. They are a forest species that needs extensive, closed canopy cover in which to successfully reside and reproduce.

Another native species that was at one time rare, but has become reestablished in western Massachusetts is the gray fox, cousin of the more commonly seen red fox. Like other hunters, the gray fox needs to range widely for food. Their home range sizes tend to vary depending on availability of food, season, and disturbances in the area, but they have been known to range between 100 acres (.4 sq. km) and 1,200 acres (5 sq. km) seeking out cottontail rabbits, small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and more. The gray fox prefers dense woods interspersed with old fields and warm cavities and crevices in which to den. One interesting characteristic of the gray fox is its tendency to avoid white pine forests, preferring most other forest types in New England (yellow birch-beech-sugar maple, spruce-fir, oak-pine) without predilection.

That symbol of New England, the moose, has made a strong comeback in western Massachusetts, and is continuing to disperse into New York and Connecticut. Sightings of these spindly legged, yet hulking mammals have been on the rise among woodland owners in western Massachusetts, and the signs they leave behind in the form of scat, browse, and antler rub are common throughout our woodlands. Moose have an average home range of about 6,000 acres (25 sq. km) but may range significantly greater distances when looking for mates. As herbivores, they spend much of their time looking for aquatic plants and young trees on which to browse, needing to eat about 3% of their body weight per day in the summer months.

Many of us enjoy observing wildlife as one of the perks of living in the rural, forested parts of Massachusetts. So many of the animals we like to see, like those described above, require substantial forested areas in order to be able to achieve long term success. As we can see, their home ranges are vast compared with the average ownership size in Massachusetts, which can be worrying if our goal is to help perpetuate these wildlife populations. You may maintain your woodland in a way that is beneficial to a particular species, or at the least is not detrimental, but if your neighbor and your neighbor’s neighbor do not do the same, the impacts on those species that need large tracts of forest can be significant.

This is the great challenge to conservation throughout the Northeast, where the overwhelming majority of undeveloped land is owned by individuals. Our landscapes are mosaics of ownerships requiring great cooperation and coordination if we are to keep large habitat areas intact. Fishers, and foxes, and moose don’t see the property lines as we’ve established them but they do encounter fractured habitats when landowners convert their land to other uses. In order for habitat tracts to remain unfragmented, landowners should think of their property in the context of the greater landscape, a piece of a bigger whole, where the decisions of individuals can have impacts on the greater ecosystem.

For more information on New England wildlife and their habitats, two excellent resources are available for purchase: New England Wildlife: Habitat, Natural History, and Distribution by Richard DeGraaf and Mariko Yamasaki and Landowner's Guide to Wildlife Habitat: Forest Management for the New England Region by Richard DeGraaf. These are available at Amazon and University Press of New England (www.upne.com), or check your local bookseller.