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Post by 4ward on Apr 9, 2024 19:56:47 GMT -5
I’m not familiar enough with timber practices. They are cutting the south end of Grove Park and it seems a bit weird to me how they are doing it. Very selective, cutting new roads thru younger pines, leaving many scattered pines throughout larger tracts of older trees (like alot). It doesn’t look like a typical cut, prep, replant. Any ideas?
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Post by bullfrog on Apr 9, 2024 20:11:22 GMT -5
I’m not familiar enough with timber practices. They are cutting the south end of Grove Park and it seems a bit weird to me how they are doing it. Very selective, cutting new roads thru younger pines, leaving many scattered pines throughout larger tracts of older trees (like alot). It doesn’t look like a typical cut, prep, replant. Any ideas? Different from thinning them? |
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Post by 4ward on Apr 9, 2024 20:29:03 GMT -5
I’m not familiar enough with timber practices. They are cutting the south end of Grove Park and it seems a bit weird to me how they are doing it. Very selective, cutting new roads thru younger pines, leaving many scattered pines throughout larger tracts of older trees (like alot). It doesn’t look like a typical cut, prep, replant. Any ideas? Different from thinning them? Yes. couple hundred acres clear cut like usual, then just as much adjacent where they left a tree every 60- 80’(?), then plowed a new road/ truck loading area in the middle of younger 5-10 year old trees. I don’t know why they would leave scattered pines like that. |
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Post by Crkr 23 on Apr 10, 2024 4:57:05 GMT -5
If it's on the Orange Lake block, the thinned pine area maybe being set up for a gopher mitigation area like the turtle pen area south of River Styx Rd.
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Post by drgibby on Apr 10, 2024 5:59:58 GMT -5
Hope it isn't a real estate cut!
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Post by cadman on Apr 10, 2024 6:05:04 GMT -5
Hope it isn't a real estate cut! That was my thought, housing development. I pulled up a google map to see the area and saw this comment under the reviews. It is 2 years old so may be unrelated. It's a really cool place , but unfortunately they are cutting the hardwood trees out . About 100 acres worth , to be used for fuel wood at Gainesville GRU facility . A waste of natural habit because of electricity . |
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Post by Crkr 23 on Apr 10, 2024 6:50:13 GMT -5
If it's where I think it is, it's in a conservation easement, I think, so no development.
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Post by 4ward on Apr 10, 2024 6:55:20 GMT -5
It is the gopher mitigation area. I stopped and snapped a couple pics this morning. Could not figure why they would be so selective. Just being curious   |
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Post by Crkr 23 on Apr 10, 2024 7:19:26 GMT -5
If it's the mitigation area I don't think they are allowed to clear cut it. It has certain parameters that have to be maintained for the preservation of the gophers. The trees that are left are probably what is considered "seed trees", they will reseed the area with out disturbing the area to much.
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Post by Crkr 23 on Apr 10, 2024 7:33:03 GMT -5
4ward, tried to send you a PM, don't know if it went through.
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Post by whitebacon on Apr 10, 2024 7:41:19 GMT -5
If it's the mitigation area I don't think they are allowed to clear cut it. It has certain parameters that have to be maintained for the preservation of the gophers. The trees that are left are probably what is considered "seed trees", they will reseed the area with out disturbing the area to much. I'm not following this thread. But.......If someone is talking about a legally permitted and approved mitigation area in Florida, feel free to ask me about the rules. No one can touch it afterward. Gophers, and any other natural wildlife must be maintained. Have done this a long time before I left. The rules haven't changed. |
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Post by 4ward on Apr 10, 2024 8:25:48 GMT -5
If it's the mitigation area I don't think they are allowed to clear cut it. It has certain parameters that have to be maintained for the preservation of the gophers. The trees that are left are probably what is considered "seed trees", they will reseed the area with out disturbing the area to much. Makes sense. This area is what they apparently refer to as a gopher relocation site. I guess they are still allowed to log it? Seems a little strange that they would be allowed to work it at all. When they first put the cloth barrier along the highway years ago, it was kind of a joke. The turtles walked right under it. I could not tell you how many I have walked off the road thru there. |
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Post by Crkr 23 on Apr 10, 2024 8:35:49 GMT -5
If you would have looked closely at the "escapees" you would have seen that they were numbered. They mark some of the shells outer scales with notches or drilled holes, kind of like how they marked hogs on the old hog claims. Each outer scales has a specific value.
So far as logging it, they probably had to locate all the burrows and keep the heavy equipment so far away. They also have to keep the new growth thin enough, generally by burning, to allow enough sunlight for wire grass and forbes to grow. From what I understand, they have to maintain it like this into perpetuity.
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Post by cyclist on Apr 10, 2024 10:25:24 GMT -5
If it's the mitigation area I don't think they are allowed to clear cut it. It has certain parameters that have to be maintained for the preservation of the gophers. The trees that are left are probably what is considered "seed trees", they will reseed the area with out disturbing the area to much. Makes sense. This area is what they apparently refer to as a gopher relocation site. I guess they are still allowed to log it? Seems a little strange that they would be allowed to work it at all. When they first put the cloth barrier along the highway years ago, it was kind of a joke. The turtles walked right under it. I could not tell you how many I have walked off the road thru there. I think Crkr23 is spot on. So dense stands with lots of shrubs and not much herbaceous, grassy groundcover is not good for gophers. Opening the stand up for sunlight to hit the ground encourages groundcovers and grasses (fine fuels) which help carry fire which helps reduce sun robbing woody shrubs and oaks and helps keep it as an open treed savanna like system.
Basics on Florida ecosystems and prescribed fire.
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Glenn
Junior Member
Posts: 95
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Post by Glenn on Apr 10, 2024 10:28:22 GMT -5
Hope it isn't a real estate cut! Exactly what it sounds like to me. I would not doubt it if they are selling the property not owned by the water management. |
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Post by cyclist on Apr 10, 2024 10:50:25 GMT -5
Hope it isn't a real estate cut! Exactly what it sounds like to me. I would not doubt it if they are selling the property not owned by the water management. They (weurheaser?) can't sell, it has a permanent conservation easement. If they sell, the WMD would buy it. |
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Post by boiledpeanut on Apr 10, 2024 13:56:08 GMT -5
So where in Grove Park? I was just there over the weekend. Saw some equipment on Fish Camp Rd. But nothing to major.
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Post by walkerdog on Apr 10, 2024 18:00:08 GMT -5
Exactly what it sounds like to me. I would not doubt it if they are selling the property not owned by the water management. They (weurheaser?) can't sell, it has a permanent conservation easement. If they sell, the WMD would buy it. Not so. Conservation easements don’t prevent a sale of the encumbered property. The encumbrances just remain with the land when it’s sold. The negotiated easement agreement may have a provision in it though that gives the state the first right of refusal for purchase if it is ever offered for sale. Each negotiation is unique so you’d have to read the easement document to know if that was one of the provisions in it. |
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Post by 4ward on Apr 10, 2024 18:05:59 GMT -5
Pete,
I was under the impression that Weyerhauser could sell. Hence the massive increase in the price of a permit.
(I cant spell it either 😃)
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Post by cyclist on Apr 10, 2024 18:17:44 GMT -5
They (weurheaser?) can't sell, it has a permanent conservation easement. If they sell, the WMD would buy it. Not so. Conservation easements don’t prevent a sale of the encumbered property. The encumbrances just remain with the land when it’s sold. The negotiated easement agreement may have a provision in it though that gives the state the first right of refusal for purchase if it is ever offered for sale. Each negotiation is unique so you’d have to read the easement document to know if that was one of the provisions in it. Thanks for correcting that. They can sell, but the land can't ever be developed or changed. |
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Post by 4ward on Apr 10, 2024 18:32:41 GMT -5
They will turn to leasing. (And it will be an even sadder day)
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Post by Crkr 23 on Apr 10, 2024 18:48:23 GMT -5
I remember hearing years ago that Grove Park may end up being leased to the Cracker Boys Hunt Club. This was during the time that Weyerhauser was trying to develop the land that is now Cracker Boys Hunt Club. It may have been just a rumor, but it did make sense because Cracker Boys was such a well established club.
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Post by cyclist on Apr 10, 2024 19:18:04 GMT -5
There is nothing to suggest anything other than land management associated with the GT mitigation area is there?
It would be nice if it was included in Lochloosa wma.
I hunted it a ton before the split. Is has some neat areas and with SJRWMA management it would be much much better off ecologically.
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Post by bswiv on Apr 11, 2024 5:11:06 GMT -5
Not familiar with the specific piece but what Pete said about managing it fits with what is described. Getting rid of the invasive oaks would be a first step in getting more light to the ground and then thinning the pines to further it along. Herbicide that targets oaks.....hexazinone.....but does not kill herbaceous vegetation nor pines ( except in crazy high amounts ) might also be part of the mix.
If they manage for GTs, which really comes down to managing for native grasses and forbs, then every other animal out there benefits, from deer to rabbits to mice. It's a win all the way around.
As for harvesting where there are GTs.......mark burrows and then work around them.
We've about 200 acres ( 165 is ours and 35 is FP&Ls ) that we are managing for GTs......not as a mitigation bank because that was just too much paperwork and regulations.....but rather enhancing the area with the GTs simply filling in naturally as the habitat improves. Quail & turkey have already increased their use of the area.
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Post by bullfrog on Apr 16, 2024 15:17:48 GMT -5
Are they really invasive in that stretch between Gainesville and Ocala? That area was vast hammock lands historically. I understand that large swaths of mature long-leaf pine forest have been lost. But there was also a lot of natural hardwood hammock in north central Florida. But I don’t ever see hammock restoration efforts. There seems to be a bias for pines and against hardwoods for some reason. Between the two habitats, mature hammock seems like the one most endanger of extinction in modern Florida. |
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Post by Crkr 23 on Apr 16, 2024 17:03:34 GMT -5
I remember my first hunting trip to Land Between the Lakes. It was the most beautiful giant hardwoods that you could imagine. We were at the ranger station and made a comment about how these woods must have been as God created them. Nope the park ranger replied, it was all prairie with intermittent hardwoods. The Indians kept it burnt and the hardwoods didn't come about until the settlers arrived. The settlers were afraid of fire destroying their homesteads. Without the fire the hardwoods flourished.
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Post by bswiv on Apr 16, 2024 19:03:45 GMT -5
Are they really invasive in that stretch between Gainesville and Ocala? That area was vast hammock lands historically. I understand that large swaths of mature long-leaf pine forest have been lost. But there was also a lot of natural hardwood hammock in north central Florida. But I don’t ever see hammock restoration efforts. There seems to be a bias for pines and against hardwoods for some reason. Between the two habitats, mature hammock seems like the one most endanger of extinction in modern Florida. We actually have more hardwoods than would have been present 500 years ago......at least if what the researchers tell us is correct. Lot's of variation in the area between Ocala & Gainesville......a good portion of the Ocala National Forest, and much other of it, having been what is classified as "scrub". What we often fail to get across correctly is that the "pines" are in reality a proxy for the vast array of grasses and forbs that thrive under their less closed canopy. And of course with the recurrent fires that their needles carry so well. And it is that vegetative diversity that supports the greatest variety, and volume, of wildlife. Oaks, especially closed canopy oak forests with a understory composed of very few species and of those species all of them being very sparse is for most of the year a food desert for wildlife. On the other hand, a open canopy pine forest, with some turkey and post oaks out there amongst them as would have been the case in most of the drier land types has a great array of grasses and forbs and the like......including low bush blueberry, huckleberry, highbush blueberry and more.......all of which conspire to feed animals 52 weeks a year rather than just the few weeks oaks do so. Not that oaks are unimportant but rather that they are less important than assumed. |
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Post by bullfrog on Apr 16, 2024 20:08:42 GMT -5
Pines usually equate to poor soil, and hardwoods equate to rich soil. The settlers found the hammocks as they were and settled in them because those were the good places to farm in. As far as wildlife, the richer soil of hammocks gives browsing wildlife more nutritious things to eat than nutrient-poor flatwoods.
There’s no way there’s more hammock in Florida now than there was 100 years ago. And the hammocks of 100 years ago were at least present 200 years ago because we have good written and picture documentation of them. The richest hammocks were generally in the interior. In north central, they ran from Ocala northward to Gainesville, west until the sandhills of Levy, then started again from west of Williston to the coast.
500 years ago is anyone’s guess. Florida changed a lot when the natives went extinct in the 1500s and left the interior of the state mostly devoid of humans for a century.
There was also millions of acres of bamboo forest in Florida. That’s what “canebrakes” were. I don’t ever see anyone trying to restore that kind if habitat.
Consider that the pine flatwoods and hammocks of 200 years ago probably looked like they looked back then not just because of fire or the lack thereof, but also because of millions of cattle keeping the woods open. Based on what I’ve seen with my cattle and palmettos, cows probably kept thousands of acres of palmettos eatened back in a given area. And then their constant crapping was enriching the soil and raising the pH.
Soil determines the vegetation that will grow in it, but decades of plants decaying in said soil will also change the soil.
Florida, except for the Everglades, has probably never consisted of any particular habitat in an area for more than a few centuries. Intervention by man, animal, and elements, probably shifted things constantly. What is being restored as flatwoods today may have been hammock for the last 2 centuries, then may have been canebrake before, and was last flatwoods 800 years ago.
I would guess that the push towards long-leaf pine restoration is arbitrary in terms of picking which era the manager is choosing to restore. Which doesn’t make it wrong. All management choices are just that, a choice. To favor one species or habitat over another. To put your finger on the scale in the way you think it should go. Nature is your garden to mold like you want.
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Post by cyclist on Apr 17, 2024 10:40:40 GMT -5
Are they really invasive in that stretch between Gainesville and Ocala? That area was vast hammock lands historically. I understand that large swaths of mature long-leaf pine forest have been lost. But there was also a lot of natural hardwood hammock in north central Florida. But I don’t ever see hammock restoration efforts. There seems to be a bias for pines and against hardwoods for some reason. Between the two habitats, mature hammock seems like the one most endanger of extinction in modern Florida. The south's long leaf pine flatwoods and sandhill can have more species in one square meter than most other ecosystems, in the world! Endangered hammock in Florida are the SE Dade tropical hardwood hammocks.
The mesic hammocks you are talking about are getting rarer and are considered a declining habitat and some communities are trying to protect them with a diverse array of development rules.
Cattle in Florida impacted the grasslands (that Ben speaks about) in that the cows ate the most desirable grasses and now they are severely reduced or gone in most fire based pine communities. They species are considered warm season tall grasses.
A destroyed hammock is hard to restore, one because they are developed first and are still developed, second they actually can come back naturally to some extent with some species loss but not like the pine systems that can be entirely lost just by the lack of fire.
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Post by cyclist on Apr 17, 2024 10:57:04 GMT -5
Pines usually equate to poor soil, and hardwoods equate to rich soil. The settlers found the hammocks as they were and settled in them because those were the good places to farm in. As far as wildlife, the richer soil of hammocks gives browsing wildlife more nutritious things to eat than nutrient-poor flatwoods. There’s no way there’s more hammock in Florida now than there was 100 years ago. And the hammocks of 100 years ago were at least present 200 years ago because we have good written and picture documentation of them. The richest hammocks were generally in the interior. In north central, they ran from Ocala northward to Gainesville, west until the sandhills of Levy, then started again from west of Williston to the coast. 500 years ago is anyone’s guess. Florida changed a lot when the natives went extinct in the 1500s and left the interior of the state mostly devoid of humans for a century. There was also millions of acres of bamboo forest in Florida. That’s what “canebrakes” were. I don’t ever see anyone trying to restore that kind if habitat. Consider that the pine flatwoods and hammocks of 200 years ago probably looked like they looked back then not just because of fire or the lack thereof, but also because of millions of cattle keeping the woods open. Based on what I’ve seen with my cattle and palmettos, cows probably kept thousands of acres of palmettos eatened back in a given area. And then their constant crapping was enriching the soil and raising the pH. Soil determines the vegetation that will grow in it, but decades of plants decaying in said soil will also change the soil. Florida, except for the Everglades, has probably never consisted of any particular habitat in an area for more than a few centuries. Intervention by man, animal, and elements, probably shifted things constantly. What is being restored as flatwoods today may have been hammock for the last 2 centuries, then may have been canebrake before, and was last flatwoods 800 years ago.
I would guess that the push towards long-leaf pine restoration is arbitrary in terms of picking which era the manager is choosing to restore. Which doesn’t make it wrong. All management choices are just that, a choice. To favor one species or habitat over another. To put your finger on the scale in the way you think it should go. Nature is your garden to mold like you want. Lightening based fire was in the state LONG before mankind and it was the driving force behind the pine dominated "grasslands". Hammocks only naturally occurred, for the most part, in fire shadows, like the lee side of large wetlands, rivers, lakes, etc. Flatwoods probably never really developed on hammock soils because of many things, mostly fire, lack of seed source, aggressive nature of non pyrogenic species, etc. Canebrakes are a small very particular mostly wetland community that were never really widespread and also probably fire maintained or else they would be overrun with hardwoods.
Plants require certain soil characteristics, depth to water, fire frequency or lack there of, etc. Sandhills could never become a natural diverse mesic hardwood hammock because during bad droughts the plants would die because of the soil characteristics, depth to water, etc.
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