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Managing Protected Lands

Managing Protected Lands. Kate Giorgi Biologist NRCS. Healthy Plant Communities are Key to Healthy Watersheds. Healthy, Vigorous Plant Communities…. Improve water quality Protect soil quality Prevent soil erosion Sequester carbon Provide sustainable forage and cover for wildlife .

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Managing Protected Lands

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  1. Managing Protected Lands Kate Giorgi Biologist NRCS

  2. Healthy Plant Communities are Key to Healthy Watersheds

  3. Healthy, Vigorous Plant Communities… • Improve water quality • Protect soil quality • Prevent soil erosion • Sequester carbon • Provide sustainable forage and cover for wildlife

  4. Plant Community Health • Health of Individual Plants • Diversity of Species

  5. Why Manage? Can’t nature take care of itself?

  6. No property is immune to human impacts • Doing nothing is allowing past and current human activities to affect the land

  7. Historical Impacts Affect Today’s Landscape Forest 1700 Early 1800’s Forest Today Early 1900’s

  8. Different Successional Stages Benefit Different Species Enhancing Wildlife Habitats: A Practical Guide for Forest Landowners...Enhancing Wildlife Habitats: A Practical Guide for Forest Landowners. SS Hobson, JS Barclay, and SH Broderick, Northeast Regional Agricultural Engineering Service, 1993.

  9. Modern Activities Affect all of our Land • Fragmentation and Loss of Open Space at the Landscape Scale • Suppressed Disturbances • Fire, Beavers • Diseases • Chestnut Blight, Dutch Elm • Invasive Species • Both plants and animals

  10. The Invaders Invasive Species are the next biggest threat to our biodiversity after loss of natural areas to development.

  11. Oriental Bittersweet

  12. Japanese Barberry

  13. Norway Maple

  14. Burning Bush(Winged Euonymus)

  15. Bush Honeysuckles

  16. Autumn Olive

  17. Glossy Buckthorn

  18. Black Swallowwort

  19. Multiflora Rose

  20. Phragmites(Common Reed)

  21. Invasive Control • Herbicides • Mechanical (pulling, cutting, tilling) • Grazing • Burning • Persistence

  22. Creating a Conservation/ Management Plan

  23. Inventory Current Conditions • Both on site and at landscape level • Specific environmental concerns • Determine Objectives • Consider past land use • Take into account feasibility (soil, sun, moisture, surrounding area, cost, time, etc.)

  24. Establish a Conservation Plan • Determine what needs to be done • Decide what is the best way (herbicide, mechanical, burning, etc.) • Establish timeline • Monitor Conditions Over Time • Make changes to plan as needed

  25. Resources

  26. http://www.dem.ri.gov/programs/bnatres/fishwild/grasslnd.htm

  27. Forest Management Plans • Inventory present conditions • species, quality of trees, age of stands • Looks at long term capability of site • Make recommendations depending on your goals • forest health, wildlife, timber, recreation

  28. Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) • Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)

  29. Providence Water and the Management of Joslin Farm

  30. Wolf Hill and the Smithfield Land Trust

  31. Wolf Hill • 250 acres along ridge between Rt. 116, Farnum Pike and Mountaindale Rd. • Owned by the Smithfield Land Trust • Portion of property subject to easement granted to the Narragansett Electric Co. (National Grid)

  32. Woonasquatucket River Watershed Wolf Hill is located within the Woonasquatucket River Watershed. The 18 and a half mile long Woonasquatucket River has a watershed area of 32,474 acres in six Rhode Island communities. The Woonasquatucket watershed includes portions of Glocester, Smithfield, North Smithfield, Johnston, North Providence and Providence.

  33. Wolf Hill Conservation Plan

  34. Inventory Current Conditions • Forest • Red oak, white pine, A. beech, white oak • Lack of diversity in stand age and understory • Grassland/Shrubland • Power lines – invasives • gravel pits – erosion • Vernal Pools • Goat’s Rue – rare plant

  35. Determine Objectives • Increase the diversity of the forest by managing for different successional stages • Improve vernal pool habitat • Improve the quality of grassland/shrubland habitat • Stabilize gravel pit area w/warm season grasses • Remove invasive plants

  36. Establish a Conservation Plan • Currently have a WHIP plan • Provides funds to assist with the stabilization of gravel pit area, control of invasives, creation of clear-cut areas, monitoring • Currently working with a forester to develop a forest management plan • Will determine location of clear-cuts patches

  37. Monitor Conditions Over Time

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