Tag: Prescribed Fire
The content below has been tagged with the term “Prescribed Fire.”
Articles
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Dave Helon, forest ecologist at Grand Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Photo by Dan Chapman, USFWS.
Hunt Alabama. And Mississippi. And the rest of the country.
March 19, 2020 | 8 minute read
Grand Bay, Alabama — Head west on U.S. 90 from this old Gulf Coast farming town, turn left onto Pecan Road and then follow Bayou Heron Road through the Grand Bay National Wildlife Refuge to one of Alabama’s best spots to go duck hunting. In Mississippi. Because you can’t easily reach one of the finest redhead-hunting sites in Alabama without first crossing the border into the Magnolia State. But that doesn’t keep dozens of Alabama duck hunters from hauling their Jon boats to the 10,200-acre, bi-state refuge each morning before the sun crests Grand Bay. Learn more...
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A rare hairy rattleweed plant. Photo by Daniel Chapman, USFWS.
Learning to love a hairy rattleweed
February 18, 2020 | 6 minute read
Brunswick, Georgia — It sounds like the name of a punk rocker, or an illicit drug. It lurks under power lines, along roadsides and between rows of commercial pine trees. It’s covered in tiny, cobwebby hairs. It’s got a shape only a botanist could love. Pity the little-known, inelegantly named hairy rattleweed, or Baptisia arachnifera. It is one of the nation’s rarest plants, found in only two southeast Georgia counties and federally listed as an endangered species. Learn more...
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Young longleaf pine at The Jones Center, also known as Ichauway. Photo by Dan Chapman, USFWS.
Woodpecker swap meet
January 13, 2020 | 9 minute read
Tallahassee, Florida — Will McDearman stood on a chair, raised his voice and beseeched the hundred or so wildlife officials gathered in a nondescript auditorium to offer up every woodpecker they could find. “Are all the birds on the table?” he asked. Murmurs of assent followed. McDearman, like an auctioneer, then ended the bidding that joined woodpecker donor with woodpecker donee. “Going once,” he said. “Going twice,” he said. Learn more...
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Grand Bay habitat area after mastication. Photo by USFWS.
Deepwater Horizon settlement Funds help Mississippi coastal habitats
December 17, 2019 | 2 minute read
Habitat management activities are well underway on the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment Grand Bay Land Acquisition and Habitat Management Project. Learn more...
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A marsh at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. Photo by Orville Allen, CC BY 2.0.
Want to hunt a refuge? Fish a hatchery?
November 7, 2019 | 8 minute read
St. Marks, Florida — The slash pine forest is thick and overgrown, impenetrable due to walls of saw palmetto, gallberry and fetterbush. A hunter this season would more likely get lost in there than bag a whitetail. Next season, though, will be different. Dan Frisk, project leader for the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, stands by a deer stand used for the youth hunt each December on the refuge. Learn more...
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A freshwater lake on St. Vincent NWR. Photo by Dan Chapman, USFWS.
An exotic hunt on a Florida island
October 7, 2019 | 8 minute read
Apalachicola, Florida — In 1907, a New York doctor, patent-medicine salesman and one-term congressman bought St. Vincent Island for $12,500 and set about turning the palmetto and pine-fringed preserve into a “wildlife emporium.” Dr. Raymond Pierce built trails, cottages, barns, dams and sluice gates to create duck ponds. He grew vegetables and raised cattle. And he also imported a menagerie of exotic Asian antlered beasts including sambar deer from India, a prized trophy for big-game hunters. Learn more...
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A male red-cockaded woodpecker showing off the red feathers behind its head called a cockade. Photo © Robert B. Clontz, The Nature Conservancy.
Joining forces
August 27, 2019 | 7 minute read
Fort Stewart, Georgia — As military partnerships go, this has to be one of the oddest, and strongest. The fighting men and women of the 3rd Infantry Division train alongside… red-cockaded woodpeckers. Ft. Stewart just west of Savannah and north of Hinesville, GA. Map by Roy Hewitt, USFWS. Soldiers maneuver the eastern edge of the army base under a canopy of longleaf pine where the iconic woodpeckers make their home. Learn more...
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Heather Alley near an experimental population she planted for her master thesis. Photo courtesy of Heather Alley.
With help from many partners, the endangered smooth coneflower fights to come back
August 16, 2019 | 5 minute read
Droopy and slender pink petals give it a daisy-like appearance. Delicate, yet fierce, with a tall and spiked-domed center, it thrives in places that aren’t exactly dainty. Along power line rights-of-way, roadsides, dry slopes, and other disturbed places, the smooth coneflower fights to defend its turf. Left unchecked, trees and shrubs can opportunistically overpower the open prairie-like spaces that wildflowers call home. The smooth coneflower is an endangered wild plant in the aster family. Learn more...
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Reclaiming a dump
June 27, 2019 | 3 minute read
Since Fiscal Year 2018, the West Georgia Field Office of the Partners for Fish and Wildlife (PFW) Program has participated in a regional cooperative agreement in partnership with American Forestry Foundation (AFF) to provide cost share for work on private lands in southern Alabama and west-central Georgia. The goal of this partnership is to improve habitat and provide technical assistance for at-risk species on private lands; this work can help track conservation actions, inform listing determinations and provide regulatory predictability to landowners. Learn more...
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A buoy washed ashore by Hurricane Michael at St. Marks NWR.
Service makes headway in Hurricane Michael repairs
October 17, 2018 | 5 minute read
St. Marks, Florida — The images of Hurricane Michael’s rampage across the Panhandle have been seared, by now, into the nation’s collective consciousness: the roofless homes; the mountains of debris; the long lines of anguished people; and the miles of chopped-in-half trees. The worst of the damage came courtesy of winds nearing 155 mph. Michael’s counter-clockwise punch, though, pushed water from the Gulf of Mexico deep inland, swamping small towns, barrier islands and wildlife refuges, particularly along Michael’s eastern edge. Learn more...
