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Native Habitat Project - Renewing Alabama's Natives

gcr0003

gcr0003

Well-Known Member
SH Member
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Nov 1, 2018
Messages
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I came across this guy a while back and have been enjoying his youtube shorts about grasslands, prescribed burns, native species, and other forestry and land management stuff. This guy is local to me in the North Alabama so it makes it that much cooler to see the work he is doing. I personally hate invasive species such as bradford pears, kudzu, and privot and so i've enjoyed learning more about land management and restoring land from timber to natural wild oak savannas. I had read about Alabama's native grasslands before but this was the most recent thing I heard about re-cultivating them in some capacity.

I think he is more or less running a business, but if there was a company doing this type of conservation work local to me I would be interested in supporting with my time and possibly money. The knowledge gained from doing some of this work would be invaluable. @Nutterbuster

I don't know the implications of the grasslands for deer, but I know a restoration of grasslands would aid in the restablishment of upland game birds in Alabama such as grouse and quail.
 
This first video is just an overview of him launching this project, but you need to check out some of his informational shorts. They are really cool.
 
I've been following him for a while now myself. He is a wealth of knowledge.
 
youtube.com

Paw Paw Fruit

youtube.com youtube.com

This year I found several Paw paw patches but they were very young and not bearing big fruit like this yet. Anyone tried a pawpaw fruit before?
 
gcr0003 said:
youtube.com

Paw Paw Fruit

youtube.com youtube.com

This year I found several Paw paw patches but they were very young and not bearing big fruit like this yet. Anyone tried a pawpaw fruit before?
Click to expand...
Yup, it's pretty good. Really small window for being ripe though, and no real shelf life if I remember correctly. When I tired it it was really mushy so that could be a no go on texture for some
 
Speaking of native species I was talking to an old timer after going to Spain. I was telling him about all the many chestnut trees that were there. I was telling him how I don't see many where I live and hunt. He started telling me how some disease or blight or something ran through much of the united states and destroyed almost all the chestnut trees.

www.usda.gov

What it Takes to Bring Back the Near Mythical American Chestnut Trees

Sometimes reaching a height of more than 100 feet tall with trunk diameters often well over 10 feet, the American chestnut was the giant of the eastern U.S. forests. There were once billions of them and their range stretched from Georgia and Alabama to Michigan, but the majestic tree was gone...
www.usda.gov www.usda.gov
 
There are a few longleaf forests here local to me and it's nothing but grasses under the big mature trees....and we always see lots of deer and turkey whenever we go hiking there. The fires are required for those habitats to be healthy
 
Weldabeast said:
The longleaf ecosystems promotes/go hand in hand with the glass land habitat....
Click to expand...
Yep. Last week I walked close to 3k acres of longleaf habitat in my home county. They've got oodles of it in CNF too.

I've never been impressed with any of it for deer habitat, but it looked like there was a fair quail and turkey population on this tract.
 
Nutterbuster said:
Beavers are unfairly maligned in my opinion too. A beavermarsh or beaverpond is about the most biodiverse microhabitat around. If there's one around, it's always my first stop scouting once I work out the roads and property lines.
Click to expand...
They brought in alligators to deal with the beavers up here. It didn’t work lol. Plenty of beavers still, and a good bit of alligators. They (alligators) may have been native though.
 
gcr0003 said:
They brought in alligators to deal with the beavers up here. It didn’t work lol. Plenty of beavers still, and a good bit of alligators. They (alligators) may have been native though.
Click to expand...
Gators really cleaned up the nutria numbers down here.

I would think beavers usually end up in backwaters, and a Gator small enough to be in their habitat would be too small to eat one.
 
gcr0003 said:
Speaking of native species I was talking to an old timer after going to Spain. I was telling him about all the many chestnut trees that were there. I was telling him how I don't see many where I live and hunt. He started telling me how some disease or blight or something ran through much of the united states and destroyed almost all the chestnut trees.

www.usda.gov

What it Takes to Bring Back the Near Mythical American Chestnut Trees

Sometimes reaching a height of more than 100 feet tall with trunk diameters often well over 10 feet, the American chestnut was the giant of the eastern U.S. forests. There were once billions of them and their range stretched from Georgia and Alabama to Michigan, but the majestic tree was gone...
www.usda.gov www.usda.gov
Click to expand...
Yeah, chestnut blight is a real sad story https://forestpathology.org/canker/chestnut-blight/ though there is some promise of resistant trees: https://acf.org/

Same thing with Dutch Elm Disease and the American elm, and now in our day - Emerald ash borer and all ash species.
 
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