April 30, 2025, Planning Board Special Meeting Transcript - WEHI

05/12/2025 02:23:28 PM Page 85 to 88 of 116 22 of 48 sheets 85 so-called interior species probably nest on the site.1 Again, that's something that could be discovered or2 studied with on-site access. I did see a worm-eating3 warbler on-site, the other ones are just almost4 definitely going to be, based on the site and habitat5 and the species that I did see. So that's what I saw6 and Part 2 of what I think in general about the typical7 bird community there.8 And so the next thing I want to talk about is how9 I think the community of birds in that site will change10 based on what I understand about the proposed11 development. And the short version is that the interior12 species, Chairman Bagoff's astute, people live here, but13 it's a little more complicated than just less birds.14 Interior species as a component of biodiversity are15 likely to decline in numbers or disappear all together.16 Whereas edge or open habitat species are likely to17 increase in number or appear naturally in places that18 they don't appear on the parcel. So for example, going19 back to my Page 20. Some of these species are unlikely20 to occur in the core forest right now, if maybe ever, or21 you might find them rarely using that habitat coming22 from an open habitat or edge habitat into the core for23 some function, but with the development that's proposed24 opening up all that space in the middle will introduce25 86 almost all these species and what will have been an1 interior forest bird community turns into the typical2 backyard bird community. Not that there's anything3 wrong with that, I love the backyard birds, but as Dr.4 DeVito said we have a lot of backyards, we don't have a5 lot of actual forests, especially in this part of the6 world.7 And so I want to give you information about how8 -- what it looks like when birds exhibit insensitivity9 to the amount of forest -- the size of forest patch10 they're found in. So starting off with a species that's11 called peewee and what you see on the horizontal access,12 this is from, I probably should mention, this is from13 an, in my field kind of a legendary study which I don't14 know if any of you ever played like scientists in15 molecular biology, but in my field this, as a paper with16 over a thousand citations, this goes up on, like we have17 hung it up on the wall, printed it out in platinum. In18 other fields of science that's

ular biology, but in my field this, as a paper with16 over a thousand citations, this goes up on, like we have17 hung it up on the wall, printed it out in platinum. In18 other fields of science that's nothing, but in this type19 of science this paper is a classic. That's what this20 figure comes from and they generated the data by21 sampling almost 500 different points in lots of22 different habitats and bird communities where they23 worked in the mid-Atlantic almost identical to the bird24 communities here. The species that are found there are25 87 almost identical. So this first example is an example1 of a species that it's occurrence doesn't change now2 matter how big the size of the forest patch as we're3 dealing with in the study. So they went into very large4 forest patches at this end of the scale and they went5 into smaller forest patches and they went into really6 little tiny forest patches and they had an equal7 likelihood of finding eastern peewees across that entire8 range of forest. So this is a species that doesn't care9 about how big the forest is. It's not sensitive to the10 size of the forest.11 MR. AFRAN: For the record, this is the12 slide headed, Eastern Wood Pewee, P-E-W-E-E.13 This is one actually zoomed in. There's the14 A. slide. So this is non-sensitivity. This is what the15 same figure looks like for what is considered an area16 sensitive species or an interior species, the wood17 thrush. So it's the same study, same sampling size and18 same scale on the X axis forest area. You can see the19 forest gets smaller and smaller, the probability of a20 wood thrush occurring gets smaller and smaller. The21 maximum probability of finding a wood thrush anywhere,22 even in the biggest forest is about 80 percent. But if23 you, as you make the forest smaller along this scale24 that chance goes to about point 8 down to about point 3.25 88 I should say the dashed lines on either side are just an1 indication of a statistical confidence of the solid line2 in the middle. So this is the difference between a --3 the difference between an insensitive species and a4 sensitive species and seeing how this effects the number5 in terms of the size of a natural parcel. What I've6 done here is I marked about 58 acres on this X axis here7 which equates to or round 25 hectares and so in 258 hectare patch you have about 7 percent of likelihood of9 attracting a

l parcel. What I've6 done here is I marked about 58 acres on this X axis here7 which equates to or round 25 hectares and so in 258 hectare patch you have about 7 percent of likelihood of9 attracting a wood thrush, which is almost the maximum no10 matter how big it gets. So you've reached the plateau.11 Whereas if you shrink the size of this forest down to12 say five-acre patches your likelihood goes down to like13 50 percent. So you have about a 50/50 percent chance of14 attracting a wood thrush in that amount of size of patch15 loss. So it's a scale at a maximum 80 percent, that's16 about a 30 percent drop. And this is what I mentioned17 earlier where many of these basic concepts of -- basic18 concepts apply across species, these are what are --19 these are the same analysis for what are considered more20 sensitive bird species and in every case what you can21 see is that, that forest patches get smaller the22 likelihood of that bird occurring gets lower and lower.23 MR. AFRAN: For the record, this is the24 slide with four graphs lined up next to each other.25