The Clemson University Forestry and Natural Resources Department will receive $30,000 a year for three years, beginning in 2010, for a total of $90,000, to help South Carolina forest landowners improve wildlife habitat on managed lands through practices such as promoting aquatic and riparian areas, managing for landscape wildlife habitat features, conserving rare species and communities, protecting special sites, and encouraging partnerships with natural resource agencies and conservation organizations.
The project addresses a wide variety of SFI 2010-2014 Standard requirements including Objective 4, which says program participants must "manage the quality and distribution of wildlife habitats and contribute to the conservation of biological diversity by developing and implementing stand- and landscape-level measures that promote a diversity of types of habitat and successional stages, and conservation of forest plants and animals, including aquatic species." It also addresses Objective 6, which requires that program participants "manage lands that are ecologically, geologically or culturally important in a manner that takes into account their unique qualities" and Objective 10, which requires the use of best management practices to protect water quality. The work is expected to result in an optional guidance module in the SFI 2010-2014 Standard for "value-added" wildlife habitat improvement on industry lands.
In addition to Clemson University, partners include Upstate Forever, Nemours Wildlife Foundation, Quality Deer Management Program and the National Wild Turkey Federation.
The work at Clemson's 17,000-acre/6,900-hectare Experimental Forest will serve as a model for private landowners across the U.S. Southeast, and provide a teaching laboratory for students as well as providing new information and innovative approaches to integrate wildlife habitat improvement practices into timber management programs.
The project will implement and monitor over time forest-management practices that improve timber production while enhancing wildlife habitat. Practices to enhance plant diversity and wildlife habitat in the forest include prescribed burning, selective timber harvesting that opens forest stands to encourage multiple canopy layers, buffers around sensitive areas, and retaining and enhancing a variety of habitat features important to wildlife, such as deadwood, snags and dead trees.
With more than 75 percent of South Carolina's natural resources on private lands, Clemson University provides research-based information to help landowners, foresters and natural resource professionals manage forest for timber products and wildlife habitat. Forestry and wildlife contribute more than $6.5 billion annually to the state's economy.
Dr. Greg Yarrow
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