The hunt was not open to the public. “This was a targeted hunt with a specialized group that works with other conservation organizations in and around the state,” Kane said.
Audubon has monitored its forest for over 15 years and it has had a management plan to protect the bird habitat for close to 12 years, according to Kane. “During that time, we’ve seen a dramatic change in our forest under story, which is important for our birds and other wildlife in the forest,” she said. “We discovered our deer population is consuming everything in the under story. The only thing left is non-native invasive plants, primarily barberry with patches and clearings of multiflora rose and bittersweet.” Kane said black-throated blue warblers, magnolia warblers, black and white warblers, worm-eating warblers, wood thrush and veerys need wildflowers like different species of lilies, Indian cucumber root and bellwort. “We know the wild flowers we had here are completely gone,” Kane said of botany surveys done over the past two decades. “There was virtually no seedlings and saplings in those plots, because they’ve been browsed completely.” “We will be doing replanting once we feel the deer population is a little more manageable,” she added. Aside from replanting, Kane said, volunteers spend hundreds of hours pulling barberry from the forest every year. Among them are its Invasive Plant Strike Force, Boy and Girl Scouts and students from Westover and Taft schools.
“Barberry is a host plant for Lyme ticks,” Kane said of the insect that carries Lyme disease.
She said "barberry attracts the ticks and white-footed mice, another carrier of Lyme disease".
