Find the full story I produced for The Nature Conservancy here on their website.
TRANSCRIPT
So we're in the Oakmulgee District of the Talladega National Forest. The track we're on today is called
the Wheeler Mountain Track, which is just under 600 acres. The Wheeler Mountain Track, which we're
trying to acquire to incorporate into the Oakmulgee District of the Talladega National Forest is a really
good example of the type of projects that the Nature Conservancy is capable of doing if we can raise the
funds necessary to do that in our Ireland Opportunity Fund.
We estimate, based off of the timber cruise information that we got out here, that the majority of the
Longleaf Pine forest is in the 80 to a 100 year old range for the older trees. The largest known
populations of Red-cockaded Woodpecker in the state are on the western part of the forest. You can see
there's a big block of forest there, and over here it's really scattered. And so we're trying to create big
enough blocks that they can reestablish Red-cockaded Woodpeckers in these areas. it would be
our goal to restore fire to this tract. This would've naturally been a much more open pine woodland.
Historically, many of the ecosystems in the US evolved with fire. And then as Indigenous people moved
into the landscape, they continued that use of fire and then into the nineteen hundreds to mid-nineteen
hundreds, there was free range cattle, so farmers also burned off the land so that the cattle could graze.
And then at some point we started suppressing fire.
Historically, Red-cockhead Woodpeckers occurred throughout the entire range of Longleaf Pine, which
was over 90 million acres from Virginia to East Texas. And with that fire suppression and conversion to
Loblolly Pine plantations development, they have been relegated really to military bases, national forest,
and a few areas on private ownership. They require a really open understory and sub canopy. And so, fire
suppression obviously closes those areas in and it's undesirable for them to live there anymore. And so a
big part of the restoration of that is creating these areas where you have multiple types of habitat.
Red-cockaded Woodpeckers are unique in that they actually use live trees for their cavities, whereas a lot
of the other woodpeckers use dead snags and trees like that for their cavities. And so Red-cockaded
Woodpeckers require old growth. The Longleaf Pine gets what's called a Red Hearts Disease, which
means the interior of the tree starts getting really soft and it allows the woodpecker once it gets in there
to, to build these cavities. And so it's really critical to have these older trees for them to survive.
The main concept with the Ireland Opportunity Fund is a fund that allows us to purchase land what we
call co-op deals, which is we are co-opting with a federal or state agency to acquire land and hold it until
they can raise the funds, and then that money revolves back into that fund, which allows us to continue
to do those similar kinds of projects.