The Animals Of Pennsylvania

Section 01

Penn's Woods, Cut Down And Grown Back

Pennsylvania means Penn's Woods, and the name was accurate: the state was roughly 90 percent forested when Europeans arrived. By 1900 it was close to 30 percent. The logging boom of the late 1800s stripped the northern tier so completely that the region was called the Pennsylvania Desert, with photographs showing horizon-to-horizon stumps and slash fires burning through the debris.

Everything large went with the trees. Elk were gone by 1867, bison earlier, wolves by 1892, mountain lions by 1874, and beavers by around 1900. White-tailed deer fell so low that Pennsylvania imported animals from other states in the early 1900s to rebuild the herd.

The forest came back to roughly 58 percent, and with it a genuinely impressive set of recoveries. Pennsylvania now has one of the largest black bear populations in the East, a free-ranging elk herd, beavers in every county, and a bald eagle population rebuilt from three nesting pairs in 1980 to hundreds today.

Two things distinguish Pennsylvania from its neighbours. The Kittatinny Ridge, running diagonally across the state, is one of the most important raptor migration corridors in eastern North America, and Hawk Mountain on that ridge became the world's first refuge for birds of prey in 1934. And the state sits on the Marcellus Shale, so gas development has become a significant landscape factor in exactly the forested regions that recovered.

Section 02

Pennsylvania's Official State Animals

The ruffed grouse is a more troubling symbol now. Pennsylvania's grouse population has fallen sharply, driven by maturing forest that lacks the dense young growth grouse need and by West Nile virus, to which the species proved unexpectedly vulnerable. The state bird is now a species of active conservation concern.

Section 03

Habitats By Region, And Who Lives In Each

1. Allegheny Plateau and northern tier

The state's largest forest blocks, including Allegheny National Forest and the Pennsylvania Wilds. This is black bear and elk country, plus bobcat, fisher (reintroduced in the 1990s), beaver, and forest interior birds including cerulean warbler and scarlet tanager. The northern hardwood forest here is the state's most intact.

2. Ridge and Valley and the Kittatinny

Long parallel sandstone ridges with limestone valleys between them. The ridges channel autumn raptor migration, and the valleys hold caves and springs. Timber rattlesnake dens are concentrated on the rocky ridgetops, and the region holds Allegheny woodrat, now much reduced. See Appalachian Mountains.

3. Pocono Plateau and northeast

Glaciated uplands with bogs, hemlock ravines, and cold streams, holding species with northern affinities. Bog turtle, northern flying squirrel, and boreal-associated plants persist here at the southern edge of their ranges. See Pocono Mountains.

4. Piedmont and southeast

Rolling limestone farmland and the Philadelphia region, the most developed part of the state. Wildlife concentrates in stream corridors and preserves, with white-tailed deer at very high suburban density and coyote throughout. The Serpentine Barrens in Chester and Lancaster counties hold rare insects on toxic soils.

5. Lake Erie shore

Pennsylvania's short Great Lakes frontage at Presque Isle, a sand spit that acts as a migration trap. It has recorded well over 300 bird species in a few square miles and is among the best birding sites in the state.

6. Rivers: Delaware, Susquehanna, Ohio

The Susquehanna is the largest tributary to Chesapeake Bay and carries a substantial share of its nutrient load. The Delaware holds Atlantic sturgeon and shad, and dam removals on tributaries have restored migratory fish passage. The Ohio headwaters at Pittsburgh hold a recovering mussel fauna after severe historic pollution.

Section 04

Hawk Mountain And The Raptor Corridor

The Kittatinny Ridge runs about 185 miles across Pennsylvania, and in autumn it functions as a highway. Southbound raptors use the updrafts deflected off the ridge to glide for long distances with minimal flapping, which concentrates thousands of birds along a narrow line.

Until the 1930s that concentration made the ridge a shooting gallery. Hunters gathered at gaps and killed hawks by the hundreds, both for sport and because raptors were widely regarded as vermin. Photographs of the piles reached Rosalie Edge, a New York conservationist and suffragist, who leased the land in 1934 and posted it against shooting, then bought it. Hawk Mountain Sanctuary became the world's first refuge for birds of prey.

The count kept there since 1934 is one of the longest continuous raptor datasets anywhere, and it did real scientific work. Declining counts of bald eagles, peregrines, and ospreys through the 1950s and 1960s provided some of the earliest population evidence of DDT's effects, feeding into the case that led to the ban.

Section 05

Mammals Of Pennsylvania

• White-tailed deer: the state animal, roughly a million animals, and the dominant force in Pennsylvania forests. Deer browsing at high density prevents tree regeneration and suppresses wildflowers, and forest managers describe deer as the single biggest obstacle to regrowing hardwood forest.
• Black bear: around 15,000 to 20,000, one of the largest populations in the eastern United States, present in most counties and increasing.
• Elk: extirpated by 1867 and reintroduced between 1913 and 1926 with animals from Yellowstone. The herd struggled for decades and then grew, and now numbers well over a thousand in the north-central counties, supporting a lottery hunt and a visitor centre. Related: state parks where elk gather in fall.
• Bobcat: reduced to very low numbers and now recovered enough to support a limited season.
• Fisher: absent for a century, reintroduced in the 1990s with animals from New York and New Hampshire, now established across much of the state.
• River otter: extirpated from most of the state, reintroduced beginning in 1982, and now present in every major watershed.
• Beaver: gone by 1900, restocked from Wisconsin and Canada in the 1910s and 1920s, now statewide. See what happens when beavers leave.
• Coyote, red and gray fox, mink, weasels, striped skunk, raccoon, opossum, woodchuck, squirrels, porcupine, snowshoe hare in the north: all present.
• Allegheny woodrat: a cliff-dwelling rodent that has declined severely, affected by raccoon roundworm, forest fragmentation, and the loss of American chestnut mast.
• Bats: nine species, and Pennsylvania was hit early and hard by white-nose syndrome. Little brown bat, once the most common bat in the state, declined by more than 95 percent in Pennsylvania hibernacula. See do bats hibernate.

Absent: gray wolf and eastern cougar, both extirpated in the 1800s. Occasional cougar reports are not supported by confirmed resident animals.

Section 06

Birds Of Pennsylvania

Around 430 species have been recorded. The state's significance lies in migration corridors and in forest breeding birds.

• Raptor migration: Hawk Mountain, plus Waggoner's Gap, Militia Hill, and other lookouts along the Kittatinny.
• Bald eagle: three nesting pairs statewide in 1980, and hundreds today after a reintroduction programme brought young eagles from Canada.
• Forest breeders: Pennsylvania holds a globally significant share of the breeding populations of several species, including scarlet tanager, wood thrush, and cerulean warbler. Because so much eastern forest was cleared elsewhere, the state's regrown woods carry disproportionate responsibility for these birds.
• Ruffed grouse: the state bird, in steep decline from maturing forest and West Nile virus.
• Grassland birds: Henslow's sparrow, bobolink, and eastern meadowlark, which now depend heavily on reclaimed strip mine grasslands in the west, an accidental habitat that has become regionally important.
• Waterbirds: Presque Isle on Lake Erie and the Susquehanna and Delaware valleys concentrate migrants, and snow geese stage at Middle Creek in the tens of thousands each late winter.

Section 07

Reptiles, Amphibians, And Fish

Pennsylvania has around 37 reptile and 38 amphibian species. Three snakes are venomous.

Snakes: 21 species. The timber rattlesnake is the most widespread venomous species, concentrated on rocky ridges and subject to a permit-only regulated season that remains contentious. The eastern massasauga survives in only a few western wetlands and is federally threatened. The northern copperhead occurs across the southern half.

Turtles: bog turtle in calcareous fens (federally threatened), plus wood turtle, spotted turtle, eastern box turtle, map turtles, and snapping turtles. Several are declining from collection and road mortality.

Amphibians: eastern hellbender, the state amphibian, in the Susquehanna, Allegheny, and Ohio drainages, with populations declining from sedimentation. Also mudpuppy, spotted, Jefferson, and marbled salamanders, four-toed salamander, and around 17 frog and toad species. Vernal pool breeding migrations on the first warm rainy nights of spring are a well-watched event.

Fish: brook trout is the state fish and the only native stream trout, restricted increasingly to cold headwaters as streams warm. Atlantic sturgeon in the Delaware is federally endangered. American shad runs on the Susquehanna have been the subject of decades of fish passage effort at the lower dams with mixed results. Pennsylvania's limestone spring creeks in the centre of the state are nationally known trout fisheries.

Section 08

Dangerous Animals In Pennsylvania

• Ticks: Pennsylvania consistently reports among the highest numbers of Lyme disease cases of any state in the country. Blacklegged ticks are present in every county, and anaplasmosis and babesiosis also occur.
• White-tailed deer: Pennsylvania has among the highest deer-vehicle collision rates in the nation, with well over 100,000 collisions a year by some estimates, and deer are the main host sustaining adult ticks.
• Venomous snakes: three species, all uncommon and localised. Timber rattlesnake bites happen occasionally on ridgetops in summer.
• Black bear: no fatal attacks in most of the state's history. With 15,000 to 20,000 bears and heavy suburban overlap, food conditioning is a significant and growing management issue.
• Coyote: attacks on people are extremely rare.
• Rabies: raccoons are the main vector, with bats and skunks also involved.

Section 09

Endangered And Protected Species

Pennsylvania's pressures are unusual in that overabundance is one of them. Deer density suppresses forest regeneration across large areas, which harms the shrub-layer birds and plants that depend on young growth, and it is a genuine ecological problem rather than a nuisance one. Beyond that: white-nose syndrome, forest fragmentation from gas infrastructure and roads, acid mine drainage that still sterilises hundreds of miles of streams from historic coal mining, sedimentation, and stream warming that pushes brook trout upstream into shrinking refuges.

Section 10

Where To See Wildlife In Pennsylvania

• Hawk Mountain Sanctuary: the autumn raptor flight, with broad-winged hawks peaking in mid-September and golden eagles in late autumn.
• Elk Country Visitor Center, Benezette: the state elk herd, best during the September and October rut when bulls bugle in the fields.
• Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area: tens of thousands of snow geese and tundra swans in late February and early March.
• Presque Isle State Park: Lake Erie migration trap with an exceptional bird list.
• Allegheny National Forest: bears, fishers, and the state's biggest forest blocks.
• Pine Creek Gorge: bald eagles, otters, and a deep canyon corridor.
• Ricketts Glen and Pocono bogs: salamanders, bog species, and northern relicts.
• John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, Philadelphia: an urban tidal marsh with marsh birds and migration.