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Preserving the ecosystem of flying squirrels in Appalachia

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Category: research Video duration: Preserving the ecosystem of flying squirrels in Appalachia
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Date published: 16 Sep 2025 Video views: 496
Katie Gorman and Mark Ford with the College of Natural Resources and Environment are collecting data atop Whitetop Mountain in Virginia.  For the last two years they have been setting acoustic detectors in the high-elevation red spruce forests to monitor populations of Carolina northern flying squirrels.
For a good many years, we've been researching the Endangered Carolina Northern Flying Squirrel and the Southern Appalachians, and a similar subspecies, the Virginia Northern Flying Squirrel in West Virginia. Both these animals inhabit high-elevation red spruce forest, and part of our research is not only to understand basic ecology and conservation needs of both flying squirrels, but to also understand its role in perpetuating the restoration and recovery of the red spruce forest. We're compiling about 20 years worth of data on all of these mountains in the southern Appalachians. We're using more passive monitoring techniques for these squirrels, so like acoustic detectors that we're doing here, and they're able to record ultrasonic frequencies that we can't hear with our ears. And from those vocalizations, we can tell the difference between the northern flying squirrel versus the very common southern flying squirrel, which is throughout Virginia. So we're resetting these detectors and we've put batteries in and refreshed them so that they can record into the fall so that we'll have an overlap with the actual locations where we had detectors last year to look at the differences year to year. In theory what's good for the squirrels is indicative of healthy habitat and that healthy habitat will help the other species too that are struggling here because a lot of them are endangered and the squirrels are going to be a great indicator for spruce tree health and spruce forest health.

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