Conservation and Management: Before and After

Big Neck

March 2006. This part of Big Neck has been regularly burned for decades.

March 2007. Area burned in a prescribed fire.

April 2007. Quick recover of understory when you burn in the growing season.

September 2007. Grasses begin to grow quckly towards the end of the summer.

October 2007. Regularly burned pine savannas are some of the most botanically diverse areas in the Southeast.

Disking in Bird Alley

February. A strip is disked into a field that was burned a month before.

August. The field begins to recover.

October. This picture was taken a little farther down the field (look at the trees). This is primarily ragweed, a great seed producer and cover for wildlife.

Timing of disking is important. This picture was taken in the summer in the same field complex. The area on the right (on the left of David) was plowed in the summer and is dominated by sickle pod, a nasty invasive field species. The area on the right was disked in December and is full of ragweed (good).

Forest No. 2

July 2006. The area on the left was very thick. The goal was to open the forest up and maintain with fire.

August 2006. A forestry mulcher (i.e., GyroTrac) was used to set back the shrubs and sapling trees. They were too big to bush-hog and to burn.

August 2006. The results of the mulcher. Because of the close proximity to the golf course (No. 2 hole in distance), it was cleanly mulched; i.e., everything was pulverized into wood chips. This provides an immediate clean look, but is slows the healing process because of all the debris on the ground.

March 2007. The area was burned to try and reduce some of the mulch. It will need to be burned a few more times to help speed the process.

October 2007. Sweetgums were the first things to grow back in the understory. They were sprayed in the summer with Garlon 4. This area will take a few years to get a diverse understory.

Longleaf Pine

December 2004. Longleaf pine seedlings were planted by Spring Island members. This is the grass stage of the longleaf. They remain in the grass stage for several years.

January 2006. The longleaf were planted in an old field that was not adequately site prepped with the appropriate herbicide. The result was a lot of bahia grass (bad) that formed a thick turf and competed with the longleaf and native grasses for light.

March 2006. Area was burned in late February to reduce competition from the bahia grass.

March 2006. Burned longleaf. It looks dead, but it isn't. The ability to tolerate fire at such a young age is what separates longleaf pine from other southeastern species such as loblolly.

May 2006. The bahia grass (bad) and broomsedge (good) are beginning to grow back.

May 2006. The area was sprayed with a selective herbicide (Oust) to release the broomsedge from competition with the bahia grass. Charles from the golf course helped out while our tractor-mounted sprayer wasn't working.

October 2006. The growth of the bahia grass was stunted, giving the broomsedge a chance to get established. The longleaf are in the broomsedge. Because we are trying to manage for wildlife in addition to timber, we like the tall native grasses.

September 2007. Some of the longleaf are making the jump out of the grass stage.

Native Grasses

May 2006. Area is dominated by bahia grass. The goal is to convert the field to native grasses.

July 2007. It was burned in the winter of 2007 and then followed up with a bush-hog. This allows good herbicide contact with the growing grass. It was sprayed with Metsulfuron Methyl (e.g., Escort) to kill the bahia grass but not the broomsedge.

August 2007. The bahia grass is beginning to die while the broomsedge and purple top grasses remain. Multiple applications are needed to kill the non-native grasses.

October 2007. The different species of Andropogon are doing well.

This is how you want native grasses to grow - in clumps with bare ground between them. This allows for small animals, such as quail chicks, to easily move through the grass while still having protective overhead cover.

Palmetto Point

March 2007. This area was burned in March 2007. It wasn't our intention to burn the Juncus marsh, but despite having 6-8 inches of standing water in it, the thatch was so thick that we couldn't stop it from burning without considerable effort.

May 2007. This is what the burned Juncus looked like two months after the fire. You can see how clear it is compared to the unburned picture below.

May 2007. This is located on the opposite side of the trail that was used as a fire break.

July 2007. A couple of months later and the marsh grass is quickly recovering. None of the palmettos were killed in the fire. The standing trunks were already dead.

July 2007. Even though they looked like they were harmed in the fire, the palmettos produced abundant fruit.

October 2007. Burning the marsh released the competition for goldenrod.

Star Mountain

November 2005. Much of the tree line was getting thick, and the fields were overgrown. The goal is to have open forests bordering fields that contain high diversity. The field on the right is planted with winter wheat for the deer.

Early February 2006. The area was burned, including the hill.

Late February 2006. A backhoe was used to pull out a lot of the large shrubs and trees to set back the successional clock. You can see the piles of debris; these were later burned. The waxmyrtles and other trees that were not burned were bush-hogged.

August 2006. The area is beginning to recover. The trees growing in the ditch in the middle of the picture were herbicided. The fields are now maintained with disking and fire.

Wirebender Woods

May 2006. The goal was to create an open mixed forest that could be maintained with fire. This area was bush-hogged a few months before this picture was taken.

August 2006. This area was selectively thinned to allow more sunlight to reach the forest floor.

March 2007. After the logging operation. The logging debris was piled into burn piles to speed up the recovery of the area.

August 2007. Garlon 4 was sprayed in the summer to kill the understory trees. Killing the understory trees and shrubs gave the grasses a chance to get established. The grasses will be the primary fuel for carrying future prescribed fires through this forest.