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Posted by Mike Baranski on 20:07:35 05/25/11
In Reply to: Re: A New Bird for My Palm Beach County List posted by Bryant Roberts
Growing season burns are an excellent way to control hardwoods. They don't necessarily lead to the drowning of plants but instead they are top-killed. The plants put all their energy into leaf production and so on that they are left susceptible to fire. But fires will not get rid of the palmetto as they have taken over what used to be a very herbaceous understory. Same goes here at Corbett. This is completely due to fire suppression for prolonged periods and poorly executed burn intervals. The only way to get rid of palmetto is to mechanically chop it. But this is very expensive. $300/acre compared about $10/acre if you burn it. We have had great success chopping areas and restoring them to a herbaceous understory albeit not much acreage.
I can compared the current composition of the understory of Big Cypress to that of Corbett. And we have an excellent population of Bachman's. I cannot compare the hydrology and interspersion of upland pine/cypress/marshes and wet prairies. They are quite different.
Not exactly sure why they are not there but something ran them off. Maybe there were never too many of them to begin with and changes in hydrology sent them to Corbett?
On a side note, they have numerous Brown-headed Nuthatch and we have none!
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