Studying the Rewilding Long-Game: Ecology Research on NEWT Forest Plots

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What happens when a forest is given the freedom to rewild after a long history of logging? This might seem like a question that science and ecological research have already answered; that each step of the rewilding process has been mapped out with great precision, telling us exactly what happens in the absence of active management.

After all, we know very well what happens under active management. Many land managers work hard to produce the outcomes they want, constantly tweaking variables to shift species composition, adjust light levels, or thin out tight tree stands. This management leads to fairly predictable results—why shouldn’t the opposite, passive rewilding, entail the same predictability?

Because forests are surprisingly complicated. They are an exquisite layer cake of interacting and intersecting living and inert beings, each following their own trajectory. This makes anticipating the outcome of passive management a trickier business. But understanding this other side of the management coin, however thorny, is critical as rewilding gains steam in conservation circles and draws wider recognition of its ability to restore biodiversity and act as a natural climate solution.

Establishing Forest Plots across the Northeast

To better understand how these processes play out across a variety of circumstances and contexts, Northeast Wilderness Trust’s (NEWT) Wildlands Ecology program has set the stage for long-term studies using minimal-impact plots on five Northeast Wilderness Trust preserves. Beginning in 2022 with the establishment of 20 plots at the Woodbury Mountain Wilderness Preserve in Vermont, the work has gone on to include establishing 40 plots across the Grafton Forest Wilderness Preserve in Maine, Bear Pond Forest in New York, and Grasse River Wilderness Preserve in New York, as well as resampling 8 plots established by a partner organization over a decade ago on the Alder Stream Wilderness Preserve in Maine.

Expanding the Literature on Rewilding Forests

Data collected from each plot includes the diameters and species of trees, the size and decay class of downed logs, the presence and abundance of invasive species, a complete plant list, animal track and sign, slope, water features, canopy cover, and more. Each plot will be resampled for these data every 5 years. Meanwhile, the plots are being used for smaller-scale research projects, such as a wildlife camera study on how different species make use of various classes of coarse woody debris.

The Wildlands Ecology team established these plots using the Wildlands & Woodlands Stewardship Science long-term forest monitoring protocol developed by the Highstead Foundation and Harvard Forest. Collecting these data will help us understand what rewilding looks like in forests that face a cascade of novel stressors, like a changing climate, shifting species ranges, introduced species, including forest pests like emerald ash borer and hemlock woolly adelgid, and the many other challenges that come with an increasingly fragmented and developed landscape. And they will add to a growing, but still nascent, body of literature that documents what happens when humans take a step back and allow Nature to exist in an untrammeled state.