Tag: Prescribed Fire
The content below has been tagged with the term “Prescribed Fire.”
Articles
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
Prime example of wildland urban interface on Sanibel Island, J.N. “Ding” Darling NWR. Photo by USFWS.
Safe and sound burning
September 10, 2018 | 9 minute read
Hobe Sound, Florida — The well-to-do on Jupiter Island wanted the wildlife refuge burned and who was to say no? Not the federal biologists at the refuge across the Intracoastal Waterway. They were eager to accommodate their neighbors and restore the pine scrub habitat. But the stakes — and potential dangers — were high. A prescribed fire, by its nature, is carefully planned and executed to minimize mishaps. Yet, winds shift. Learn more...
-
Prescribed fire at Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.
Fire as tool, and as friend
August 24, 2018 | 8 minute read
Fire – prescribed and carefully managed – can be a wildlands’ best friend. Wildlife officials tout its ecological benefits. Hunters, fishermen and birders laud its cattail-clearing, nutrient-adding attributes. Hydrologists praise unimpeded water flows. Photo by USFWS. Learn more...
-
Stephen McGuin. Photo by Nicole Vidal, USFWS.
On the front lines
July 27, 2018 | 7 minute read
Austin Griffin and Stephen McGuin are training to become wildland firefighters, an odd career choice given their unusual, at-times troubled backgrounds. Yet they’re perfect fits for a still-new training program crafted by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to put a diverse and economically disadvantaged cadre of young men and women on the front firefighting lines. Learn more...
News
-
Red-cockaded woodpecker. Photo by Martjan Lammertink, U.S. Forest Service.
Base recognized for conservation work
May 30, 2018 | 4 minute read
Camp Blanding, flush with federally endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers, donates juvenile birds to other wildlife areas across the South. Nearly two-thirds of the National Guard base in Northeast Florida is prime habitat for at-risk gopher tortoises too. More than 10,000 acres of pine and scrub is carefully burned each year to benefit under-threat flora and fauna as well as conservation-friendly longleaf pines. And the joint military base is a critical piece in the creation of a wildlife corridor that connects central Florida to southeast Georgia. Read the full story...
