complete agenda - Florida Department of Environmental Protection

APPENDIX B:
I.A. Natural Communities
� Ates Creek natural channel is intact but water is directed by a channel. Remove road by seepage
slope and increase fire return. Access slope.
� Sandhill- solid plantation of sand pine is contradictory of plan to strive towards SL and CC cover
types. Need to visit sites and move to appropriate cover type, as plantations come to
merchantability. Dome swamps are altered through bedding, ditching, breaks. However fire is
introduced with adjoining flatwoods.
� Excellent progress being made thinning and restoring fire to mesic and wet flatwoods. Excellent
progress being made in restoring function of depression marsh.
� Refine the maps to better reflect some transitional communities: particularly seepage slope and
blackwater stream. Add any needed management activities to the management plan.
� Most of this forest has been planted in slash pine by the previous owner. Good initial progress has
been made by DOF in thinning and burning these stands. Additional work will be needed to
reduce stocking densities below 80 BA. Ground cover is moderately diverse in the flatwoods and
will need regular fire with occasional growing season fire in order to improve groundcover
quality. Suggest heavier thinning in older plantations to reduce basal areas to 30-50 in order to
stimulate more grasses in the understory. This would also facilitate more burning as well as any
potentially needed mechanical treatments to reduce fuels. Groundcover in the sandhills is in poor
condition due to past bedding and sand pine planting. As a result currently there is little
opportunity for burning. Until a scope of work is developed for sand pine removal/control and
centipede grass control and some work started- very little if any, of this community is in
maintenance condition. Suggest looking at restoration actions related to sand pine removal in
sandhills- at Etoniah State Forest. More effort is needed to assess impacts and scope of work
needed to restore fire lines/ditching associated with negative effects on dome swamps. Some of
the depression marshes have an undesired pine component that may require hand crew/chain saw
removal. More assessment is needed of burning needs, etc in the seepage slope natural
community. Additional hydrologic assessment is needed related to impacts from the short ditches
associated with the small Ates Creek tributaries.
I.B. Listed Species
� Assessments need to be done to look for Flatwoods salamander and striped newt. As burning
continues surveys need to be done on rare plants.
� Need surveys for other species.
� The management plan indicates that animal and plant inventory and monitoring is a second
priority. The next revision should make it a first priority.
� Need to determine whether Flatwoods salamander occurs on the property and Black Creek
crayfish. A more thorough survey for other species is also needed. However, the ecosystem
function approach management should generally protect these and any non-documented species on
the property.
� More effort is needed to identify protocol for inventory and monitoring of imperiled animals and
plants. Focal species should be identified. The new biologist should have this as one of the focuses
and FWC should be requested to assist in this regard. There is a need to document in ARC view
past and new observations of listed plants/animals- as well as invasive plant locations and
treatment histories.
I.C. Natural Resources Survey
� Need to develop method to assess ground cover presence and quality.
� Excellent proactive stance in requiring logging crew to wash off equipment following logging in
areas with known populations of invasives. This prevents spreading to other areas.
� Monitoring of listed and rare non-game species needs to be addressed. Monitoring of ground cover
and vegetation structure needs to be conducted to ensure habitat quality is improved.
� Some potential for striped newt to occur on the property. Depression marshes on sandhill area
should be surveyed. It’s not listed, but is a rare and declining species. Probably more appropriately
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