Northwest Florida Water Management District completes largest planting year ever!

The Northwest Florida Water Management District has completed its largest planting of trees and groundcover in a single year.  In its ongoing reforestation and groundcover restoration, the Division of Land Management and Acquisition contracted to hand plant 2,827 acres of disturbed longleaf pine, bottomland hardwood and wiregrass habitat in Bay, Escambia, Liberty, Santa Rosa and Washington counties. 

            “Species diversity has been significantly enhanced or restored and water resource health has improved in many areas across northwest Florida where natural ecosystems were impacted by hydrologic alterations and habitat conversion,” said David Clayton, Environmental Scientist in the District’s Resource Management Division. “Disturbed natural habitats have thrived after harvesting offsite species, conducting prescribed burns, applying selective herbicide to competing vegetation and replanting native species.”   

“In 2010, the District planted its 10 millionth longleaf pine and its 5 millionth groundcover plug since 1994,” said Tyler Macmillan, Chief of the District’s Bureau of Land Management Operations.  

            Over 1.6 million longleaf pine tubelings were planted on 2,237 acres of disturbed longleaf pine habitat on the Perdido River, Choctawhatchee River/Holmes Creek and Econfina Creek Water Management Areas (WMA).  More than 35,000 mixed hardwood and cypress trees were planted on 87 acres of mitigation tracts on the Perdido River, Yellow River and Choctawhatchee River/Holmes Creek (WMA), as well as Womack Creek mitigation project in Tate’s Hell Swamp.

            The District also re-established groundcover habitat, planting wiregrass (over 711,000 plugs), toothache grass (58,000 plugs) and mixed wet pine flatwood species (over 185,000 plantings) on disturbed sites from the Perdido and Yellow rivers, Choctawhatchee River/Holmes Creek and Econfina Creek WMAs to the Sand Hill Lakes Mitigation Bank and the Ward Creek West mitigation tract. 

            “The District is a leader in restoring disturbed upland/wetland overstory and groundcover habitat,” said Executive Director Douglas Barr, “especially in xeric (dry) sandhill, mixed bottomland hardwood, wet prairie and wet pine flatwoods habitats.  Our success ensures we adequately offset wetland losses due to Florida Department of Transportation (DOT) projects.”

            “Years of longleaf pine/wire-grass habitat restoration experience on District uplands helped us succeed recently with wet pine flatwoods restoration,” said William O. “Bill” Cleckley, Director of the District’s Division of Land Management and Acquisition.  “On some of our project sites, we must achieve specific habitat restoration success in five years or less to satisfy permit requirements and obtain mitigation credit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and DOT.”

            Seeds for most District groundcover restoration projects were collected from Garcon Point and Econfina Creek WMA.  Seeds from at least 45 native species were released following shrub reduction and seasonal prescribed fires that mimic natural lightning-induced fire cycles.  In all these efforts, the District continues to research, refine and establish new habitat restoration techniques that increase species diversity and ecosystem health. 

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