Kevin Messenger on the way to release a brown water snake. Kevin is conducting an intensive ten-year study of snakes at the Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge.

Excerpt from "Snake Cruising"

Kevin Messenger, a graduate of North Carolina State University, had undertaken “a huge project, a ten-year mark-recapture study” of snakes at the NWR. “I want to look at the biodiversity of snakes on the refuge, see which populations are going strong, which are dwindling” . . .

Snake populations at the refuge are not static. The first “herp study” at the refuge, Kevin said, was conducted from 1975 to 1977 by John Garton and Ben Sill of Duke Power Company, about the time of the first prescribed burns at the NWR. That study found no pygmy rattlesnakes. “From 1995 to 1997, Jeff Camper from Francis Marion University did a second study.” By then, pygmies were the most common species on the refuge . . .

“When I began my study, I found 2 or 3 pygmies a night. But if you go 50 miles up into North Carolina, they are endangered. What makes the Carolina Sandhills refuge so special that pygmies are abundant? That’s one of the things I want to figure out. I think that prescribed burning is a huge benefit for pygmies, though I’m not sure why.” He speculated that burns are a boon to fence lizards, a favorite pygmy food. After a burn, the lizards are camouflaged on the charred trunks of trees. “They hide more easily from birds” . . .

Visitors to the Carolina Sandhills NWR, Kevin continued, might not enjoy knowing that 3 of the 4 most common snakes he finds are venomous, though encounters are rare . . .

Carrying his snake stick, a long-shafted handling hook, Kevin strode down the trail to the cottonmouth sluice. I followed. Closely. It was 10 pm. The terrain was dark and tangled, a grassy bank leading to a precipitous path so narrow and overgrown that I had to place each foot directly in front of the other. Large spiders, orb weavers, hung in lacey webs from branches. I had brought a flashlight, an inconsequential thing with two AA batteries that was about as useful as a birthday candle in a haunted castle . . .

I said that I had heard that cottonmoths were aggressive.

"They are to other cottonmouths. But they're not as aggressive as people think. As long as you don't step on one, you're not likely to get bit." . . .

Excerpt from "Banding RCWs"

June 2. Blue sky, warm day, cool breeze. My hands were spotted with pine tar from helping wildlife biologist Laura Housh load gear and a Swedish climbing ladder from her truck onto a four-wheeler. Laura was banding endangered red-cockaded woodpecker chicks, and she had invited me along to watch . . .

“All of our banded birds--RCWs, wood ducks, doves--have an aluminum Fish and Wildlife Service band,” she explained. On each USFWS band is a number which Laura forwards to a center in Maryland where it’s entered into a nationwide data base.

With deft fingers and special pliers, Laura put three colored plastic bands on one leg of the chick, and one aluminum and one colored band on the other. Then she recorded each chick’s colors and number on a spreadsheet . . .

Because the Carolina Sandhills NWR has a stable red-cockaded population, the refuge donates RCWs to other refuges to aid in species recovery. “We only translocate subadults, and we have to identify the birds we translocate.” She held up a chick. “For example, if this bird is the cluster’s only helper male,” she said, referring to the RCWs’ remarkable family structure, “I wouldn’t translocate him. I’d keep him here on the refuge” . . .

She handed me the chick. It was warm, the talons were well-developed, and the skin was so transparent you could see the internal organs. . . . I tried to imagine what kind of life it would have--whether it would be a helper or breeder; whether it would remain at the refuge or be translocated to Virginia, Arkansas, or elsewhere; and whether its offspring and the Sandhills crew could help keep its kind from going the way of Carolina parakeets.

With chainsaw, biological science tech Greg Boling installs an artificial cavity nest for a red-cockaded woodpecker.

“Because We Can”

(In this excerpt, I accompany Laura Housh, field biologist, and Greg Boling, biological science tech, on a field trip to install artificial cavity nests for red-cockaded woodpeckers.)

Why do this at all, I asked Laura Housh, a wildlife biologist at the Carolina Sandhills refuge. Why not let the RCWs make their own cavity nests?

“It can take them a year to make a natural cavity. Because the birds are endangered, if we lose one or two active cavities, it could compromise the family.”

But why should humans care about red-cockaded woodpeckers? Why all this trouble and expense?

“First of all," Laura said, "they are endangered and by law were required to protect them. Also, we’re the reason they are endangered. It’s our responsibility to make sure they can thrive in their natural habitat. I mean, why save an endangered species? Because we can." . . .

I love this time of year,” she added as we walked back to the truck. “The most satisfying thing is to install artificial cavities for recruitment clusters, come back the next year, and find RCWs nesting in them. That’s the best.”

Excerpt from "After the Storm: Homes for an Endangered Species"

In 1989, Francis Marion National Forest was home to thousands of mature longleaf pines and the world’s second largest population of red-cockaded woodpeckers. “In one night,” said Craig Watson, then the forest’s Wildlife Program Manager, “all of that changed.”

When Hurricane Hugo rolled over the South Carolina forest with gusts of 160 mph, it uprooted cypress and centuries-old live oaks. But longleaf pines, the trees into which RCWs most often dig their nest cavities, were hit the hardest. The morning after Hugo, only 229 of 1765 RCW cavity trees were standing. An estimated 63 percent of that forest’s red-cockaded woodpeckers--already an endangered species--were dead. . . .

Despite the loss of habitat, the RCWs had one thing going for them. At the Savannah River Site, where the population of RCWs had dwindled to 5, biologist David Allen had been at work on a technique to construct and insert artificial RCW cavities into living pines. . . .

Every year, the refuge is scouted for trees with possible red-cockaded woodpecker nests. (These woodpeckers, aka RCWs, are on the endangered species list and are the only woodpeckers to excavate cavity nests in living trees.) The trees are ringed with white paint; and before a prescribed burn, the ground fuel is raked away to a 12 foot diameter to protect the nests.

Excerpt from CHAPTER 3
from a talk with Ralph Costa, USFWS Red-Cockaded Recovery Coordinator

Red-cockaded woodpeckers are resourceful birds. For example, to deter their primary predator, rat snakes, RCWs drill resin wells around the entrances to their cavity nests. The wells leak resin, which coats the trunk to form a sticky shield against the snakes.

Because RCWs make their homes in fire-prone areas, though, I had doubts about this tactic. The cavity nests I’d seen were often 20 feet up the trunk. Sometimes higher, but also lower--as low as 6 feet. Coating a cavity tree with highly flammable resin in a fire-prone region didn’t seem like a bright idea.

“Picture the pre-Columbian longleaf pine forest,” explained Ralph Costa, Red-Cockaded Woodpecker Recovery Coordinator for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. “The trees were often 300 to 400 years old--huge, really tall. Because of frequent fires, the understory was essentially grass. De Soto [1540s] and Bartram [1770s] described those forests as prairies with trees. The bigger and taller the trees, the higher the RCW cavity nests and the farther the resin from the ground.” In extant old-growth longleaf forests such as the Wade Tract in Georgia “the cavities are 70, 80 feet up because they can be.” Before the old longleaf forests were cut, “it didn’t matter that there was sap on trees. The flashy fuel, the low intensity fires, the shorter flame heights--these probably weren’t an issue to the red-cockaded.”

Because tracts of longleaf habitat--like that of the Carolina Sandhills Refuge--are protected now, “someday the trees will be taller and the cavities higher than they are today. But until our pines get bigger, our fuels get lower, and our cavity trees increase in number,” he added, “the woodpeckers need our help. . . .

“RCWs are also an indicator species. If you have red-cockadeds, it’s a good indication that you have a healthy Southern pine forest. Some people argue that we’re investing all this time and these resources in single-species management. With RCWs, it’s easy to shoot holes in that argument. By preserving 200-acre patches of longleaf forest for the woodpeckers, we’re taking care of everything else that’s living out there.”

Much of the burning is done with a “ping-pong ball machine,” a curious rectangular steel contraption which drops incendiary balls from a helicopter into the burn zone. Officially known as the Primo Mark III Aerial Ignition Machine, the device is designed not only for starting burns but for fighting wildfires. In the Sandhills, “there’s good leaf litter for the balls to ignite in," said Fire Management Officer Terri Jenkins.

Four excerpts from Chapter Two
A Prescribed Burn

Excerpt 1: The Briefing

A weekday in early April, 7:30 a.m. I received a call from refuge manager Scott Lanier. Conditions looked good for a prescribed burn at the Carolina Sandhills NWR, and he invited me along. . . .

An hour later, I was with Scott at the refuge headquarters in the cab of a white 4x4 US Fish and Wildlife Service truck, looking at a xeroxed map of Carolina Sandhills NWR Compartment 17. . . .

“Today is a growing season burn,” he explained, “as opposed to a dormant, winter burn. Research shows that fire often occurs in the growing season. We try to mimic that. It helps curtail the oaks, which are sucking up nutrients from the soil and budding out. Our goal is not to eradicate the oaks, but to control them. Oaks are part of this habitat and provide mast--acorns--for animals.

“If we burn at this time, the fire will kill a lot of the oaks. We haven’t pushed the envelope, though, and burned in summer. You can really torch your pines if the conditions--moisture, fuel, and temperature--aren’t perfect.” . . .

The burn crew consisted of 6 men and 2 women--firefighters not only from the Carolina Sandhills NWR but from as far away as Savannah. Of these 8, 3 would be in the helicopter.

Excerpt 2: “We can’t strike a match without getting that son-of-a-gun signed.”

I shook hands with Terri Jenkins, a Fire Management Officer from the Savannah Coastal Refuges Complex and the helicopter’s burn boss. . . . In addition to herself and the pilot, a third crew member ran the “ping-pong ball machine,” a curious rectangular steel contraption bolted to the side opening of the helicopter and designed not only for starting burns but for fighting wildfires. Officially, the ping-pong ball machine is known as the Premo Mark III Aerial Ignition Machine. . . .

“The Sandhills are particularly adapted to the use of this system,” Terri said. “There’s good leaf litter for the balls to ignite in. The balls are used not only for prescribed burns,” she added, “but also for fire suppression.” A wildfire can be suppressed by starting a burn on a forest floor to consume the fuel before the wildfire can reach it. . . .

Later, back at the refuge office, I had an opportunity to talk with Patricia McCoy, the NWR’s accountant, administrative assistant, and dispatcher. Patricia is stationed in the headquarters, and her role in a burn is to monitor weather reports, obtain state approval to burn, coordinate communication between the ground and helicopter crews, and deal with a mountain of paper work. . . .

Excerpt 3: Laying Down the Line

We drove on down a maze of dirt roads deeper into the forest. Ahead, smoke was boiling out from the woods. A fire engine sat at a crossroads. The ground crew, highly visible in their yellow fire-retardant Nomex shirts, had started a prescribed burn at Unit 9.3. We parked near a scorched swath of land which paralleled the road bed and stepped out of the truck.

Striding fast along the fire break--in this case, a dirt road--the crew was creating a “black line” about 20 yards wide by pouring fire onto the ground cover from drip torches, canisters of “slash fuel,” a diesel and gas mixture in a 3:1 ratio. When tilted, the torches dripped fire from metal spouts tipped with wicks. . . .

Excerpt 4: The Burn

I had been to the refuge often, hiking, fishing, hunting, and biking; but I’d never seen it like this. It was a Dantesque scene of an inferno. The ground was smoldering black. Three-foot flames licked at the tree trunks. The yellow-shirted, smoke-smudged crew tramped through the firebreak, setting fire to any patch of wiregrass that hadn’t yet caught. A yellow fire engine, red lights flashing, stood sentinel on the dirt road.

I looked on from the firebreak with Scott and Mark Parker, the ground burn boss, and watched the thick gray smoke roiling into the sky and wondered how the devil the helicopter crew could see to drop its pattern of fireballs into the burn zone. . . .

I asked if any animals take a hit in the burns. Mark paused. “There’s always a possibility of killing a few. But on a refuge that’s 45,000 acres, the benefit of new growth outweighs the small amount of loss.” The argument is, it’s better for wildlife to suffer small, periodic burns than one catastrophic wildfire which kills an entire forest community. . . .

Scott Lanier, refuge manager, in truck, and Mark Parker, forestry technician/fire, on a prescribed burn at the Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge.

Excerpt from Chapter 1
“Fire Is Good”


The Carolina Sandhills are ancient. They are small hills, often just subtle risings and fallings in the land. It’s easy to imagine when you drive down a dirt road here or hike through the forest that the Sandhills are the time-wasted dunes or marooned shore of an unknown Paleozoic sea . . .
To an untrained eye, the pine forests of the Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge look, well, monotonous. . . . But the refuge harbors a remnant of one of the rarest ecosystems on Earth--a longleaf pine forest, a forest home to over 720 plant species . . .
It is good to know that you don’t have to trek to Alaska or the Amazon to find the wild or rare. Sadly, you don’t have to go far to find the endangered, either. At the NWR are plant and animal species hanging onto life with slender roots and talons. And one thing that these species and the forest share is the need for fire.
To find out more about longleaf pine forests and fire, I talked with Scott Lanier, Manager of the Carolina Sandhills NWR. Scott’s headquarters is a red brick building surrounded by 45,000 acres of tall pines, wiregrass, pocosins, ponds and purple-flowering green lupine . . .
“One reason we have wildfires is because fire has been suppressed for so long that when a forest finally burns, it’s catastrophic,” Scott explained. “Had prescribed burns been introduced periodically, we might not have experienced those wildfires.”
The Sandhills, he said, has a history of fires, both natural and manmade. “Native Americans burned off fields to grow crops and hunt game. Lightning also caused areas to burn occasionally. Our area suffered some real smokin’ wildfires in the early 1940s, but as the US Fish and Wildlife Service began prescribed burning, catastrophic wildfires decreased." . . .

Back at home, I dusted off a copy of William Bartram’s “Travels” and thumbed to a passage where the author, venturing from Savannah to Augusta in the 1780s, finds himself “on the entrance of a vast plain, generally level, which extends west sixty or seventy miles . . . This plain is mostly a forest of great long-leaved pine (P. palustris Linn.) the earth covered with grass, interspersed with an infinite variety of herbaceous plants . . .”
Nearly a hundred million acres of original forest lost to America, and never having seen a stand of virgin longleaf, I was incapable of imagining what we had lost. I promised myself that I would visit an old growth longleaf forest before the year was out.

The above photo tells a lot. A burn has just swept through. The ground is smoking, and to the right, a snag still burns. A big longleaf pine, bark singed but otherwise unscathed, dominates the scene. The needles of the younger pines are still green; the low flames never reached their crowns. Several young oaks which would grow into a midstory and threaten the longleaf habitat have taken a hit and may die. But nearby, taller hardwoods have survived, enough to provide mast for raccoons and deer. Though the understory is gone, the loss is temporary: in a few weeks, after a rain, things will green up. These low-intensity burns are a boon to the forest community, preserving the habitat and promoting new growth and food sources for the animals.

Den

Aaron,

Thanks for the comment. Sorry it’s taken some days to get back to you. Allison and I have been camping and kayaking on Lake Jocassee, SC. Stayed at the primitive Double Springs campground. Paddled to Thompson Creek Falls, sunned on the rocks, swam the cool lake water. Saw lots of butterflies, including a zebra swallowtail (my first sighting of one). And, oddly, saw ten or more snakes--which is strange because though I frequently paddle blackwater swamps which are rumored to be rife with reptiles, I rarely see snakes. The snakes we saw at Jocassee were beautiful--one Eastern king snake and possibly a timber rattler (black phase) in a rocky ledge at a stream (we didn’t get close enough to verify him), and as many as nine water snakes, probably Midland, but again, I’m not sure.
Simple questions--”Where do you see yourself in this landscape of fire? Does the book explore the complex longleaf ecosystem or is it more of a personal journey?”--are hard to answer. Dr. John Elder, a teacher and friend from Middlebury College, asked me similar questions, so you’re in great company. By nature I’m not introspective, and I’m spending some time struggling to answer and draft a reply--another reason for the late response.
As a writer, I’m not only in a vast historical landscape but in a bookscape of other nature writers; and if I have any sense I’m humbled by both. If I may point to one writer and say, “That’s what I aspire to,” it would be A. R. Ammons.
In Ammons' poetry, the speaker is often walking in a huge, ever-changing landscape, asking questions and getting answers from elemental forces such as the wind. Ammons doesn’t write with a megaphone or an agenda. He’s inquiring and humorous--traits which come from a humility which comes from understanding one’s place in the universe.
I’m not a natural scientist. My method is to field-trip with those who are, to watch and ask questions and faithfully record what I see and hear. My motive for writing is like Ammons’ in “Identity,” a poem about spider webs:

it is
wonderful
how things work: I will tell you
about it
because

it is interesting

It’s beyond me to mount a campaign to save longleaf forests, though, like rain forests and arctic ice, they need to be saved. The banner of ecological salvation is borne by more knowledgeable and authoritative people, by past environmentalists like Muir and Leopold, by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Longleaf Alliance, The Nature Conservancy, the SC Prescribed Fire Council and others, and by the score of people who work and talk in these pages.
I guess the answer to both your questions, then, is “Yes.” I’m on a personal journey through a complex ecosystem--but I hope my focus is always on the landscape. If my book helps promote longleaf habitat, that’s great. But like Edward Abbey, I want to spend half my time in the wild just having fun.

Den

Ben,

Thanks for the post. Interesting name, too--were you named for the Scottish Mountain? Allison and I tried to hike it once, but stopped short of the summit. Ran out of time, had to descend to catch a bus.
Like so many plants and animals that are taking it on the chin, white wicky (Kalmia cuneata) is diminuitive. It isn’t overtly impressive and doesn’t get much press. What is impressive is its tenacity, hanging in there against the odds.
Just last Sunday several of us from the Friends of the Carolina Sandhills NWR hiked into a pocosin (a boggy depression) in search of the plant. Forester Clay Ware lead the pack. The day was hot and humid, and the undergrowth of bay, swamp azalea, holly, sweet pepper bush and a hundred other kinds of plants we waded through was shoulder-high and as thick as fur.
As if to evidence its rarity, white wicky isn’t easy to find, and we struck out. When you do find it in bloom--and you’ll only find it in a few counties in the Carolinas--it’s a woody, hip-high stem with delicate, dime-size flowers; and it’s usually a few feet down the slope of the bowl of the pocosin. (I have an entire chapter dedicated to the plant.)
As we slogged through the vegetation, I kept thinking how badly white wicky needs fire. Historically, frequent low intensity fire was part of the longleaf ecosystem. A good cleansing fire in the pocosin would cut back some of the competition and give the wicky the chance it needs to compete.
To find locations (and more info) on old growth longleaf forests, try the Longleaf Alliance website, http://www.auburn.edu/academic/forestry_wildlife/longleafalliance/ecosystem/old-growth/oldgrowth.htm

Den

Two years ago, I stopped by the Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge near McBee, South Carolina. A freelance writer, I was casting about for something to research. The refuge manager, Scott Lanier, asked if I’d write an article or two on prescribed burns for local newspapers.
Prescribed burns, though controversial, are critical for preserving longleaf habitat--a habitat I knew nothing about. I couldn’t tell a longleaf from a slash pine or loblolly.
Fifty thousand words and 10 chapters later, I’m still learning about one of America’s great and threatened forests, and still writing. I’ve witnessed prescribed burns (even pitched in), witnessed the capture and release of venomous snakes and the translocation of endangered birds, field-tripped with ornithologists, hunters, botanists, foresters, wildlife biologists, fire management officers, geologists, and conservationists intent on protecting red-cockaded woodpeckers, white wicky, wild turkey, quail, fox squirrels and the forests they depend on.
The result is an upcoming book on a fire-maintained ecosystem, the great longleaf pine habitat which once dominated the landscape of the Southeastern US. This blog is an intro to that book. Excerpts from chapters and photos illustrate some of the topics.
Frequently, the blog will be updated with other excerpts and comments from readers.