Drivers who travel along Interstate 133 will be able to see the changes to the once dense forest of Orton Plantation. What used to border both sides of this main road has been burnt in a standard cultivation exercise, to leave partially cleared areas between spread out pine trees.
Workers cleared the forest floor and removed the dead, sick, and weak pine streets, before tagging the healthy trees with pink ribbons, so they didn't get cut down. Over 4000 acres of the forest was burned by the foresters at Orton. Other species of pines are more common as they grow faster and require less maintenance, longleaf pines require burning every few years in order to stay healthy. Now only 3% of the original 90 million longleaf pines that covered the southeast remain.
In order to engineer these conditions a controlled burn occurs in the growing season, (it would usually be sparked by a bolt of lightning) and this allows for the plants to grow back quickly. Underneath the burned remains there is a forest floor filled with blackjack oak, bluestem, asters, turkey oak, sedge grass and wild blueberries. The forest floor is green.
When restoring a longleaf pine forest, it tends to happen from the ground up. By creating the right environment for new plants to grow through and enrich the soil for the trees, it also encourages wildlife to the area, namely: turkeys, bobwhite quail, the eastern fox squirrel and the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. Biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have visited Orton Plantation since Louis Bacon bought it and restoration has begun, and they were excited to spot the woodpecker nests of these endangered species.
Bacon and his team at Orton have expressed their desire to be completely transparent throughout the whole process to those conservation groups who may have concerns, when you're dealing with this much land there are a number of factors to consider, so they're happily cooperating to ensure that all flora, fauna, wildlife, and anything else, isn't endangered during the conservation process.
Good post
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