Page 14 - Georgia Forestry - Issue2 - Spring 2019

Non-Commercial LOperations Feel Impact
ogging and mill operations will continue to be busy until the spring, and many landowners have already turned their
attention to other priorities. This includes non-commercial operations, such as the Jones Ecological Research Center at Itchuway, a 30,000-acre forested area
that endured severe winds during Hurricane Michael, with recorded gusts hitting 130 mph. After spending the night in the Jones Center laboratory with Director Dr. Kier Klepzig, staff spent the initial phase following the storm clearing the 300 miles of roads that run through the property, and began to assess the hurricane’s effect on the environment.
“We crawled out from under the wreckage, and you couldn’t walk
more than 10 feet without running into a tree across the road,” Klepzig said. “Now, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to try and learn from this tragedy as much as we can, to share those results with other people — and hopefully, to help them with strategies to restore and maintain the structure of the forest.”
Clearing enough timber to catch up with the year’s planned fires is crucial. If too much time passes, the Center’s 900-or-so understory plants are likely to proliferate, crowding the bare soil and blocking out sunlight, so that seedlings from larger trees will have a harder time germinating. Wiregrass, woody shrubs and oak saplings grow quickly, and can contribute to smoke and air quality prob- lems when a fire finally catches. On the other hand, if they’re left alone, they can grow beyond knee-height, which makes them harder for small herbivorous animals to reach: gopher tortoises, for example, rely on regular burns to improve access to food, and though the trees blown over may provide some edible seed crops, these conditions are temporary. Of the 30 different species of amphibi- ans, 40 mammals, 50 or more reptiles, 60 or more fish, 100 or more birds and countless species of insects identified at the Jones Center, not a single one will benefit from delays in the burn schedule.
Tall Timbers Research Station, a non- profit dedicated to preserving traditional land use in Florida and South Georgia, examined radio tags in three different properties in the wake of the hurricanes, and found that changes in quail popula- tions were negligible, or even positive. Many birds, as it turned out, were likely to use downed trees as a refuge.
“The one place where we have seen a negative impact is where people get in too quickly to clean up,” he said, “since the cover is not there, and the quail don’t have protection from predators. A lot of people have called me and asked what they needed to do, and I tell most of them to hold off on any major cleanup until February or March. By then, you’re into the growing season, so you’ll have that cover respond a little faster.”
Consequences for
Wildlife, Recreation
It remains to be seen how other aspects of South Georgia’s long- leaf pine ecosystems will adjust to post-hurricane conditions. Puneet
Dwivedi, an associate professor of sus- tainability sciences at the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, added that habitat destruction was not the only issue for the forestry community to think about. The potential for Georgia’s forest to sequester carbon and abate the process of climate change was also significantly diminished.
“Forests are natural machines to suck up carbon from the atmosphere,” he said. “So, if we have lost 2 million acres, which
is a sizeable amount, then our capacity to use forestry as a tool for climate change has definitely gone down, for the next 20 to 30 years.”
Though not a lot of data has been col- lected, Dwivedi added that water and air quality were also likely to be affected. This, in turn, will have consequences for wildlife, though for anyone who cares about recreation in the region, the prog- nosis is looking surprisingly good for game birds. Most experts predict that the state will retain most of its value as an outdoor destination, providing landowners with an additional source of revenue: turkeys, for example, may move off to areas that opened up during the storms, but there is still adequate habitat in thicker forests for nesting. Theron Terhune, a program director at
12 | GEORGIA FORESTRY
PETE PATTAVINA