NATIONAL FOREST MANAGEMENT
More than two dozen members of local, regional, and state Forest Service personnel gathered at Oconee Ranger District facilities near Rock Eagle Jan. 25, for an annual meeting about the Oconee Forest Health and Wildlife Habitat Improvement Project (OFHWHIP).
Oconee District Ranger Stephanie Israel-McRae, a 20-years-plus veteran of the U.S. Forest Service, was named to her local post last May and opened the meeting by introducing each of eight scheduled speakers.
First up was wildlife biologist Kyle Cox, who presented an extensive analysis of ongoing efforts to protect the red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW), an endangered species crucial to the health, propagation and survival of mature pine forests stretching from Oklahoma to Virginia. Where more than 1.5 million of these relatively small birds were estimated to have lived in the early 1900s, less than 20,000 are now thought to exist.
“For those who don’t know, most of the decision-making that goes on in the forest here, from timber burning to silviculture practices (cultivation of trees), you name it, RCW usually has a hand in what’s going on there,” Cox stated. “We also do some other various habitat management for other species, some non-native invasive species work and try to provide public opportunities as far as wildlife viewing, hunting, things of that nature. But it all goes back to RCW eventually.”
Next to speak was Fire Management Officer Tim Kolnik and Assistant Fire Management Officer Amy Galetka, explaining their efforts from February to early May each year to burn away underbrush from state forestland, including pesky, pervasive sweet gum tree infestations, largely intended to open up better paths for animal and bird movement between the trees.
“If wildlife needs something burned; if timber’s got a sale coming up that they need burned; if silviculture has anything they need burned; and of course, RCW is our primary driver; but there’s a lot of players involved in this and how we decide where we’re going to go burn,” Kolnik explained.
He said last year his group burned ground cover over more than 32,000 acres of the approximately 116,000acre Oconee National Forest, with more than 38,000 acres scheduled for burning this year.
“That’s what we’re going to be prepping to burn,” Kolnik said. “But I don’t really think we’re going to hit every single acre. If we did, that would be a first. But the goal is to stick around where we’re at, the 32,000-acre mark, give or take a couple thousand.”
Forest Service silviculturist Deyonte Johnson, aided by Timber Management Assistant Kandra Scott, spoke next, describing vegetation management in the Oconee Forest. Johnson said he often works in conjunction with the fire management team, either through spraying herbicide to knock back weeds and undesirable plants like sweet gum after a burn occurs, or by planting new trees at a rate of approximately 250 trees per acre.
Scott said she leads a team of six now, her largest group in seven years on the job, and said there are 10 active “timber cells” available to loggers within the Oconee District right now. She explained three cells of timber were sold last year, totaling approximately 1,100 acres.
Of particular interest to everyone in attendance was the presentation by Forester Luke Wilson and Pre-Sale Forester David Ralston, who described techniques and tactics employed to combat the Southern Pine Beetle (SPB), which, though tiny, can quickly wreak havoc on pine-tree forests, rendering them economically useless and aesthetically devastated.
Wilson said the Oconee Forest appears to be on an approximate seven-year cycle related to SPBs, with its last serious infestations occurring in 2009‘10 and 2016-‘17 before resurfacing again last June. He explained the Forest Service is getting more sophisticated in its responses, though, aided greatly by turning to constantly updated satellite surveillance that quickly pinpoints new outbreaks and the direction in which the beetles will travel.
Among the methods used to combat SPB infestations are simple cut-and-leave operations which simply involve felling all infected trees toward the infestation origin point and letting bugs die off naturally, either through a lack of new food or attacks by other natural predator beetles.
“It actually works like a fire break, just trying to create a buffer there where the bugs don’t have any habitat to go to from where they are now,” Wilson explained, though larger infestations may require salvage harvests of the felled trees to remove them and the accompanying beetles from the forest at large, he added.
Lynne Woods, who with her husband in 2020 purchased 165 acres of mostly forest land off Folds Road in Putnam County, also attended the meeting. Woods said she left with a much better understanding of what the U.S. Forest Service, and more specifically the Oconee Ranger District, does.
A former Weyerhaeuser- owned property for growing and harvesting pine trees, Woods said she was told the land “had fallen out of their program somewhere in the late 1980s, early 1990s,” and was left to become what she described as “badly overgrown,” and “disappointing” in its lack of wildlife and bird activity across its overgrown forest floor.
However, after hiring Jesse Johnson, a private forester based in Greene County, she said it now looks “absolutely beautiful and there are animals and birds everywhere.”
Woods said she was surprised more landowners had not attended the meeting.
“I came to just get a better understanding how the U.S. Forestry worked here in Putnam County and to understand more about the pine beetle outbreak,” she said. “I had heard about that, definitely had concerns about it, but I feel a lot better now. I’m just really impressed with their knowledge and the forestry management program here. Very glad I came.”
