Nursery offers guidance to landowners for improving wildlife habitat

REGION — Landowners can receive guidance on planting trees beneficial to wildlife at the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s website ( pgc.state.pa.us ) by clicking on the “Forms and Programs” section and choosin “Howard Nursery Seedling Program.” They may also purchase discount trees from the commission.

The game commission’s Howard Nursery produces bare-root seedlings for wildlife food and cover on state game lands. The nursery has produced and distribued 2.7 to 6 million seedlings annually for wildlife food and cover since 1954. All Pennsylvania landowners may purchase seedlings for wildlife food and cover, watershed protection, soil erosion control and for reclamation of disturbed areas, such as surface mine site and utility right-of-ways. Seedlings cost 15 to 50 cents each in bundles of 25, plus sales tax.

“The goal of the Howard Nursery is to provide the finest tree seedlings available of those species that best provide for the various needs of wildlife, including food and shelter,” said Cliff Guindon, Howard Nursery superintendent. “All of our stock is inspected annually by the state Department of Agriculture and certified to be disease-free.”

In addition to the discount program, there is a free seedling distribution program for landowners who have land open to public hunting and are enrolled in one of the commission’s public access programs. They are eligible to receive up to 500 free seedlings annually, as available. Those enrolled cooperators with more than 500 acres are eligible for one free seedling per acre enrolled up to a maximum of 10,000 seedlings annually, as available. Cooperators are provided an order form each fall for following spring delivery. Free seedling orders are only taken in the fall through local Wildlife Conservation officers and Land Management group supervisors.

Species remaining available for spring are Eastern white pine, mugo pine, red pine, Norway spruce, white spruce, Colorado blue spruce, arborvitae (northern white cedar), silky dogwood, black locust, Northern red oak, pin oak, Chinese chestnut, buttonbush, American sweet crabapple, assorted crabapple, Washington Hawthorne, American mountain ash, common elderberry, common alder and trembling aspen.

For more information visit pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/cwp/view.asp?a=11&Q=173547.