November 5, 1998 transcript # 258-4
Subject(s): Shenandoah National Park, ice storm
Title: Shenandoah Animals

When an ice storm hit Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park last winter, it took service crews months to reopen roads and trails for hikers. But what kind of impact did the ice storm have on the animals in the park? Weather Notebook producer James Jones visited the park to find out.

Jim: "The February 4 ice storm that hit the park certainly threw the humans for a loop. The popular Skyline Drive was littered with downed trees and branches; virtually every trail in the park was impassable for two months.

Even now, with the road and trails cleared, moving around the woods off the trail to find a campsite is almost impossible in some places.

But for animals, the storm has offered up a few blessings. Right after the storm, the soft parts of those fallen branches provided food for deer in the toughest part of the winter.

The storm also ripped huge holes in the forest canopy. That lets more sun reach the forest floor, making plants animals rely on for food and shelter grow faster and bigger.

Steve Bair is the backcountry supervisor for the section of the park hardest hit by the ice storm."

Steve: "I think that its likely that we’ll have a lot more of what’s called "soft mast", which are like berries, things of that sort, and a lot of herbaceous vegetation, herbs, that are better for deer certainly and perhaps some other wildlife such as rabbit, and with all this additional vegetation, now, there will probably be more ground cover for different types of ground nesting birds, small mammals; so I think this will benefit quite few different kinds of wildlife."

Jim: "But the storm isn't all good news for animals. Some of the trees that came down in the storm produced acorns and other types of seeds in previous years. This fall, that harvest won't be so abundant. And in some places, fallen tree tops and limbs now serve as small protective cages for seedlings that in previous years might have ended up as a meal for a browsing deer."

Our show is produced by The Mount Washington Observatory, underwritten by Subaru, and supported by the National Science Foundation.

Park Wildlife - Shenandoah National Park