page_title: Beaver Valley, Delaware and Pennsylvania
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Beaver Valley, Delaware and Pennsylvania / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: English: Woodlawn Wildlife Refuge sign standing sentry to the woods.
context_page_description: Beaver Valley straddles the Pennsylvania and Delaware border in Delaware County, PA and New Castle County, DE. An unincorporated place name, it is traversed by several streams which drain to Beaver Run which itself empties into the Brandywine River. It is approximately bounded by US Route 202 to the east, The Brandywine River to the west, Thompsons Bridge Road to the south, and Smithbridge Road to the north, with Beaver Valley Road encircling a large portion of the valley. The majority of the lands in Beaver Valley have been owned for decades by The Woodlawn Trustees, which designated in the early 1970s all of its Brandywine Hundred and Delaware County holdings in Beaver Valley and elsewhere as a Wildlife Refuge. In 2012, The Woodlawn Trustees submitted development plans to Concord Township Supervisors in Delaware County for the purpose of constructing approximately 500 housing units and a 225,000 square foot national retail store, all of which would adjoin the First State National Historical Park in Chadds Ford Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania and New Castle County, Delaware.
context_section_description: Abutting intensive development on its northerly and easterly borders, Beaver Valley’s forests are reminiscent of an earlier age, and while they are in the process of slowly healing from 200 years of agricultural and milling operations, they are beginning to resemble again what the Lenni Lenape had known. Primarily deciduous forests consisting of native tulip poplar, sycamore, beech, red and white oak, cherry, ash, walnut, American hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana), and one documented American Chestnut, Beaver Valley’s woods are among the most extensive and mature in southeastern Pennsylvania. Several patches offer “interior forest” conditions, critical nesting habitat for several neotropical migrant songbird species. Many of these tracts lie at least one hundred meters from any canopy fragmenting feature like roads, power lines, or fields and offer hundreds of migratory and sedentary bird species some of the last remaining unspoiled habitat in Southeastern Pennsylvania, increasingly found in short supply and degraded quality.
  Beaver Valley is a critical part of the Brandywine and Delaware River watersheds. At least one of its streams remains cold enough and pure enough to hold a small population of native brook trout, at the extreme southern edge of their range. The once teeming population of minnows, salamanders, and crawfish supported a feral population of mink (gone wild from a failed ranching experiment), native populations of weasels, and substantial populations of skunk and raccoons. Continued efforts to improve the quality of Beaver Run have made the return of its eponymous mammal more likely.  
  A significant number of old fields are very early in the long process of reverting from past agricultural uses to meadow although several large fields in Beaver Valley are still leased to local farmers for hay production.  The forest was likely selectively cut for fuel wood and timber several times since colonial times, however much of the existing forests have been standing for well over 100 years.  Some of the trees were likely considered less desirable for lumber and fuel or were less accessible due to steep slopes.  While the Beaver Valley Woods is not considered virgin forest, some individual trees may be 200–300 years old or older.
caption: Some woods offering "interior forest" conditions in the Woodlawn Wildlife Refuge
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D70", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Nikon Capture Editor 4.3.2 W", "Image DateTime": "2012:12:03 13:49:15", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "300", "Thumbnail YResolution": "300", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5900", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5570", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:11:28 11:13:39", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:11:28 11:13:39", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "18/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "28", "EXIF SubSecTime": "90", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "90", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "90", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3008", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2000", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1, 1, 0]"}