New Private Land Stewardship Funding Opportunities with Sentinel Landscape Designation
By Peter Kleinhenz, Partnership Programs Coordinator
The 2020s have brought their share of challenges but, for landowners in the Red Hills, they have also delivered a host of land stewardship funding opportunities. Millions of dollars of financial resources have swept into our region thanks to the hard work of Tall Timbers and its many partners, providing direct assistance to landowners looking to improve and conserve their land.
Zach Butler, the Madison County forester, Becc Armstrong from Tall Timbers, and a private landowner discuss land management options on private property in Madison County, Florida.
Florida Sentinel Landscape Designation
The most recent opportunity came in the form of the Northwest Florida Sentinel Landscape Designation from the U.S. Department of Defense. This designation, which encompasses all of the Florida Panhandle from the Perdido River in Escambia County to the Aucilla River in Jefferson County, was announced in February 2022.
The Sentinel Landscape Designation is the result of hard work by Kent Wimmer with Defenders of Wildlife. Kent brought together more than 20 partner organizations, including Tall Timbers, to support the designation and highlight its potential for the region. The designation is popular because it increases access to federal, state, local, and private programs focused on land conservation and habitat management.
The Department of Defense – A Partner in Land Conservation and Management
So why is the Department of Defense so interested in land conservation and management? Besides being one of the largest conservation landowners in Florida, the Department of Defense needs to ensure that its missions can continue. Northwest Florida contains a variety of military installations, all of which prefer to conduct their training missions over lightly populated landscapes, for obvious reasons.
The Department of Defense and the United States Department of Agriculture have worked together across the country on Sentinel Landscapes to create buffers around military installations. Through this program the agencies and their partners create new opportunities for private landowners to conserve natural resources, adapt to climate change impacts, and bolster forestry and agricultural activities.
Natural Resources Conservation Service–Regional Conservation Partnership Program
Do these federal program opportunities sound familiar? They should. Tall Timbers has been leading a 5-year, $7 million effort to purchase conservation easements, and help fund landowner stewardship activities within the Aucilla and St. Marks River watersheds of Florida and Georgia. Tall Timbers applied for this opportunity through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service–Regional Conservation Partnership Program (NRCS–RCPP), and we have already worked with close to fifty private landowners.
Peter Kleinhenz, with two Georgia landowners, discussing land management options for their property in Brooks County, Georgia.
Planned work over the next year, with funding from NRCS–RCPP, includes removing dense infestations of invasive species, planting hundreds of acres of longleaf pine, and burning over 2,000 acres. Landowners involved with these management activities will have 75% of their costs reimbursed, enabling them to get more done for their land with less money.
Tall Timbers continues to apply for more funding to help private landowners manage and conserve their properties. Over the next few years, these efforts will result in more resources to draw from than ever before.
Just as the Department of Defense wants to preserve its ability to complete its missions, Tall Timbers constantly strives to enhance its ability to complete its mission—to foster exemplary land stewardship through research, conservation, and education.
To learn more about the Northwest Florida Sentinel Landscape, explore this Story Map created by Kent Wimmer with Defenders of Wildlife.
Northwest Florida Sentinel Landscapes Map
If you are interested in land stewardship resources through the NRCS-RCPP program, please email Tyler Macmillan to learn more.
Livingston Place Earns Listing on National Register of Historic Places
In January 2022, the National Park Service added the 9,125-acre Livingston Place property in Greenville, Florida, to the National Register of Historic Places, making it one of the largest designated sites in the state. National Register designation recognizes this distinct cultural landscape, along with its architectural significance, while also helping protect and preserve it for the future.
Tall Timbers has owned Livingston Place — known as Dixie Plantation from 1926-2020 — since 2013, when the Geraldine C.M. Livingston Foundation gifted the historic quail hunting property to our organization.
As current steward of the property, Tall Timbers has expanded wildlife research and made land management improvements, in addition to completing a multi-phase restoration and rehabilitation project of the 1938 Livingston Place Main House — with financial support from members of Tall Timbers’ Board of Trustees, the Red Hills community, and three Florida Department of State Special Category grants.
Master architect John Russell Pope designed the Main House; it is the only one of his designs in Florida. Pope is known for designing several prominent Washington, DC buildings, including the Jefferson Memorial and the National Gallery of Art.
“Restoring the Livingston Place Main House brings life back to this historic structure and allows Tall Timbers to utilize it for guests, science and conservation gatherings, and community events. We are excited about this first step as we evaluate a course of action based on usage and demand,” commented Dr. Bill Palmer, President and CEO of Tall Timbers.
The National Register designation is also very much about this distinct American landscape of large quail hunting preserves, rich in natural and cultural resources, explained Kevin McGorty, Tall Timbers Land Conservancy Director and nomination co-author. “This is one of the largest properties listed in the National Register from Florida, reflecting a distinct cultural landscape that was shaped by both the Livingston family and their sporting interests, and the African American tenant farmers who lived and labored on the land.”
Tenant House at Livingston Place
The Legacy of the Livingston Family
The Livingston family left a rich legacy by making the property a nationally recognized field trial venue, showcasing competition among some of the nation’s top bird dogs and their handlers. The prestigious Continental Field Trial has been hosted annually at the site since 1937, and is one of few remaining field trail events with wild bobwhite quail, thanks to science-driven land management practices that include the traditional use of prescribed fire.
The Livingstons’ implementation of land stewardship practices, as promoted in the Red Hills region by early conservationist Herbert L. Stoddard, improved not only the property’s wild quail populations, but also conserved other wildlife and restored habitats, including longleaf pine forests.
Intertwined with conservation, Livingston Place is significant for its direct association with Black tenant farmers and sharecroppers and their important role in the Red Hills’ economic, recreational, and environmental development. African Americans, freed from slave labor on large-scale agricultural plantations, adopted small-scale patch farming and cultural burning that favored quail populations and played a pivotal part in the success of hunting preserves in the Red Hills region after the Reconstruction era. Black employees at these properties also ensured smooth running of the preserve operation as skilled dog handlers, horse trainers, and house and grounds workers.
Interpretive Exhibit for the Main House Being Developed
Three tenant farmer cabins, a commissary, two workers’ cottages, three cemeteries, and a dog cemetery remain as surviving features to tell the story of this working landscape. Tall Timbers is also developing an interpretive exhibit for the main house, to share with visitors the history of the Livingston family and the role of African American farmers in shaping this revered American landscape known as the Red Hills.
GPS Telemetry Data Used to Track Wild Pig Movement and Behavior
Chris attaches a GPS collar to a subadult female pig.
As Tall Timbers continues to partner with the Feral Swine Eradication and Control Pilot Program (FSCP), University of Georgia Master’s student Chris Terrazas (advised by Dr. Mike Mengak) has spent the past three months attaching GPS collars to wild pigs captured by Wildlife Services. With support from a Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) grant, Chris will use GPS telemetry data to inform future trapping efforts and explore habitat management strategies that could mitigate wild pig population growth.
Control measures for wild pigs are well-studied, but implementation is limited to detection locality and largely reactive. Land managers might only detect wild pigs when they are traveling past trail cameras or leaving behind damage from foraging. Location data can reveal where pigs go when they aren’t foraging and what attributes, if any, pigs select for resting cover. Understanding fine-scale habitat use could help managers focus trapping and habitat manipulation in areas pigs are expected to be, rather than where they have been. We hope to use these data to direct a more proactive approach to wild pig management, especially in areas sensitive to these invasive pests.
Thus far, Chris has collected over 3,000 GPS locations on seven individual pigs in the Red Hills region. Using those data, he identified 20 resting sites and evaluated the vegetative cover at those sites, some of which pigs have visited repeatedly. Chris will use fire frequency models developed by Tall Timbers to evaluate the impact of prescribed fire on wild pig movement and behavior. Telemetry data will also be used to study the influence of abiotic factors like weather and proximity to important landscape features on wild pig habitat use. Data analysis will wrap up in 2023; stay tuned for details.
One week’s worth of GPS data from a collared pig in the Red Hills region; clusters of subsequent locations indicate prolonged use of an area and potential resting habitat.
If you would like to hear more about this project, please join us at our upcoming Red Hills land owner/manager workshop on April 15, 2022 at Livingston Place, where we will discuss the continued feral swine control efforts within the Florida-Georgia FSCP. For more information about attending, please email Kim Sash or call her at (850) 893-4153 ext. 336.
BirdQuest, which Supports the Stoddard Bird Lab, Returns April 8
By Jim Cox, Stoddard Bird Lab Director
The boisterous sounds of spring are everywhere as nature shifts from winter survival mode to the procreative rites of spring. Two eaglets are about to fledge on Tall Timbers, while many nuthatches are incubating brown, mottled eggs.
All the activity has the Stoddard Bird Lab anxious to stretch our wings in a manner that has not been easy to do during the pandemic. With life on the mend, we are resurrecting BirdQuest, our annual fundraiser that supports the important work we do with rare birds and the role that prescribed fire plays in maintaining southern pinelands, coastal marshes, and other ecosystems.
BirdQuest 2022 is designed to reflect the breadth of our work. Rather than focus on the birds found on a single Red Hills’ property, we’ll seek out birds on public lands that straddle the Ochlockonee River. We’ll launch before dawn on April 8, listening for birds along the eastern edge of the watershed near Tall Timbers. We’ll then head south looking for migratory warblers along the river’s edge in the Apalachicola National Forest, stop by the old-growth pine forest at Ochlockonee River State Park, before continuing south to end the day on public lands around Ochlockonee Bay, where some of our work with Black Rails is taking place (Mashes Sands and Alligator Point State Park). At day’s end, we hope to have 150 species on our list.
You can keep the enthusiasm running high on April 8, by making a tax deductible contribution to BirdQuest 2022. The goal this year is to secure radio transmitters and a summer internship to assist grad student Destinee Story in her work with the Common Ground-dove. Destinee has marked over 120 individuals on Tall Timbers and Livingston Place, and has her hands full trying to keep up with their movements. The generous support provided by you and others will keep all this hard work going. You can make your pledge on line here. Contributors receive a special account of the daylong event, and your contributions will continue the great legacy of important bird research at Tall Timbers.
Please join us on April 7-8 for the 15th Annual Georgia-Florida Turkey Invitational benefiting the Tall Timbers Game Bird Program. Our speaker this year will be Ryan “Cal” Callaghan, Director of Conservation at MeatEater, Inc. and host of Cal’s Week in Review podcast. Become a Sponsor or register your team by completing the online registration form. For more information, please refer to the event brochure or contact the Development Office at 850-893-4153 ext. 343.
The M-CORES program, which includes the proposed Suncoast Connector Toll Road in Jefferson County, passed through the Florida Legislature at breakneck speed with little review or analysis. Tall Timbers has a number of concerns given the potential for significant and wide spread impacts. These include fragmenting public and private conservation lands, robbing business from Main Street Monticello, impacting our rivers and other water resources, and making prescribed fire more difficult and costly.
Join us in asking the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners to OPPOSE the Suncoast Connector toll road and its path through Jefferson County.
Take action now with our easy email form.
Send an email to all five Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners with one click!
Selected Publications authored by Wildland Fire Science staff.
Educating and guiding the next generation of fire researchers and managers is a key goal of Wildland Fire Science and a resource for testing new ideas in fire research.
Tall Timbers hosts the Prescribed Fire Science Consortium, a national network of researchers and managers who promote integrated research and management to advance next generation tools for fire practitioners. https://arcg.is/1DSjDT
Working with partners in the Prescribed Fire Science Consortium, the program is building nexgen 3-D fuel beds using terrestrial LiDAR and novel sampling techniques to power new fire behavior models for prescribed fire managers. This work links to Tall Timbers work in wildlife habitat usage and ecological forestry.
Tall Timbers is leading an effort to map fire regimes at the landscape scale. Staff work with numerous agencies to evaluate fire records and satellite imagery to build this critical conservation database. https://skfb.ly/6DqOY
We are linking physics and field observations to understand the fluid dynamics of fire behavior surface fire regimes. Our work combines field observations using advanced thermal imaging techniques, laboratory studies, and coupled fire-atmospheric modeling to help managers improve outcomes of managed fire regimes.
Burn prioritization modeling seminars and fire modeling tools are supported by Wildland Fire Science to train managers in the important planning stages of prescribed fires.
The conserved lands of the Greater Red Hills region are found on working, income-producing properties that support agriculture, forestry, and recreational hunting. These properties contribute $272 million annually to local economies and support 2,300 jobs. [link to Planning & Advocacy section] The landowners’ strong stewardship ethic preserves their working lands while replenishing drinking water supplies, protecting water quality, and providing wildlife habitat for dozens of rare and endangered species. Tall Timbers’ conservation easements on these working properties encourage landowners to retain their traditional livelihood by keeping farms in family ownership.
Home to world-class wild quail populations, the Greater Red Hills region contains the largest concentration of gamebird preserves in the United States. These preserves also support the largest community of Red-cockaded woodpeckers on private lands. Indicators of high quality habitat found here include the gopher tortoise, Bachman’s sparrow, fox squirrel, and many amphibians. Tall Timbers’ conservation easements identify and protect the critical habitats of these species.
The region also boasts outstanding aquatic resources. Large river systems, like the Flint/Apalachicola, Ochlockonee, and Aucilla, flow from Georgia and feed into the Gulf of Mexico to support some of the world’s most productive estuaries. Large disappearing sinkhole lakes, like Iamonia, Miccosukee, and Jackson, provide habitat for an array of aquatic species and migratory birds. Tall Timbers’ conservation easements protect these vital watersheds and wetlands that are the lifeblood for the ecological health of the region.
Once dominated by longleaf pine, our pine woodlands support abundant wildlife and local economies. These forests need prescribed fire to stay healthy. Herbert L. Stoddard and his associates Ed and Roy Komarek were pioneers in this emerging scientific field during the mid-20th century. Tall Timbers continues that legacy with applied research on prescribed fire and land management. Today, there is a tremendous need to expand prescribed fire use beyond the Red Hills to ensure ecosystem health and reduce wildfire risk. Additionally, Tall Timbers uses conservation easements to permanently protect private woodlands while balancing the need for economic return from selective timbering.
Tall Timbers hosts the premier fire technology transfer organization—the Southern Fire Exchange. This JFSP funded effort helps connect research to management through webinars, workshops, and support of the Prescribed Fire Science Consortium.
The Longleaf Legacy landscape prescribed fire burn team arm of Wildland Fire Science works directly with landowners and partners to effectively put fire on the ground and promote prescribed fire throughout the region.
Staff and researchers support Federal fire training by serving as a cadre for NWCG training courses, ranging from basic wildland fire to advanced fire effects.
(PFTC) specializes in training fire fighters the principles and techniques of prescribed fire through practical hands-on experience. https://www.fws.gov/fire/pftc/
Private land owners are the largest source of prescribed fire in the country. These land owners and the culture of fire that was maintained by them during decades of suppression are a part of why Tall Timbers is a world-wide center for prescribed fire science. Workshops and fire training are a critical focus of the Longleaf Legacy Landscape Burn Team and our support of the Georgia Forestry Commission Prescribed Fire Center in Marion County.
BirdQuest 2022 is designed to reflect the breadth of our work. Rather than focus on the birds found on a single Red Hills’ property, we’ll seek out birds on public lands that straddle the Ochlockonee River. We’ll launch before dawn on April 8, listening for birds along the eastern edge of the watershed near Tall Timbers. We’ll then head south looking for migratory warblers along the river’s edge in the Apalachicola National Forest, stop by the old-growth pine forest at Ochlockonee River State Park, before continuing south to end the day on public lands around Ochlockonee Bay, where some of our work with Black Rails is taking place (Mashes Sands and Alligator Point State Park). At day’s end, we hope to have 150 species on our list.
