| A unit of Lasting Forests
evolving since March 30, 1999 |
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A Total Forest Management Plan
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The group of animals with great appeal and with unexploited financial potentials is one for intensive management, the furbearers. A rich variety of these animals lives on the area -- raccoon, beaver, weasel, mink, and others. These need management since they can compromise other management objectives but they can also be changed into a profitable managerial enterprise. Much research has been done on them, but much, much more is needed and few people realize the complexity and relations of their system and that of other components of LastingForests lands and its objectives. The need is for some of the most intense, far-reaching research any where in the world. It should not be on the biology of the animal alone (the past trend) but on the total profitable enterprise. Agencies have waited for funds but none (to our knowledge) have stabilized an intensive management system including feedback and future predictions. The prospects are not for recreational trapping (strongly opposed by some) but for a viable, profitable enterprise utilizing one of the natural products of the Lasting Forests areas ... in ways no one else has been able to sustain in the past.
The emphasis of a major part of the work is on the raccoon. Extensive research results can be brought to showing a superior, total resource system for one species.
Furs are a primary interest. The strategies include marketing; strategic buying; improvements in trapper success and humane taking; improved care of the pelts; storage; local cutting and trimming; alternative uses of partials; and alternative uses of the entire carcass. Fur markets seem to fluctuate due to style and other phenomena. We propose to work with the fur industry, seek new marketing strategies, avoid public confrontations, retain a private-for-profit stance, diversify the work of the group, and demonstrate the potentials of storage to achieve sale when prices are high.
Work will include sophisticated research (expected to attract visitors and students); furbearer workshops for state and federal biologists; trapper schools; vertebrate pest damage manager schools; fur-buyer schools. Software development will enhance some work, especially as it shows how communities (that support each furbearer) change over time. Trapping zones, presence of animal sign, species conflicts, profit per unit area, costs-to-take maps, are planned elements of the system. Visitors may come to the area with the planned objective of seeing and photographing all of the furbearers present. (A newsletter announces the successful people, tells of research accomplishments, shares in knowledge of the furbearers, provides excellent photographs, poems, new book suggestions and other natural history information of interest. Close links are built with Nature Folks.
Where feasible, funds for special projects will be sought from federal and state research fund pools but for the first 5 years, the work in local, highly synthetic, linking ecological succession in all communities and types to the many species commonly known as furbearers. Even if no furs are ever taken or sold, the number of large, difficult-to-see, top-of-the-food-web animals is very important to the ecology of the area and must be mastered. The rodent-, predator-, grass-, deer-system is an example of a small, conspicuous system that needs knowledge and management.
Managerial Elements
To encourage use of the area by raccoons, we will will attempt to maintain permanent ponds or streams, provide fruit and mast, leave den trees, and protect them from intense hunting pressure and harassment by dogs to maintain a stable population.
Food
Raccoons' main food, invertebrates and amphibians, will be provided in the ponds and streams which will be created. Mast for fall and winter food and fruits and berries for summer and fall food will be provided by the shrubs and grasses to be planted.
Cover
Existing overmature trees, especially maples and oaks, will be left in the stands of timber surrounding the proposed mine area. These trees will provide den sites. In addition, maples, oaks, and apple trees will be planted to provide den trees in the future.
Habitat Improvements
Creating small ponds along mine benches, erosion channels, and oxbows will increase raccoon food supplies. Cover improvement measures include the protection of den trees and the development or maintenance of forest cover along watercourses. Where natural dens are lacking, artificial den boxes will be supplied. Boxes for this purpose will be made of 1-inch thick lumber, and will be 14 inches square by 36 inches high, with a waterproof roof and a hole 4 by 6 inches next to the roof. These den boxes will be placed 25 to 40 feet above the ground.
Management
Raccoon stocking will not take place on the area, since such programs are usually expensive and ineffective. Habitat manipulation and population protection will be the types of management used.
Hunting and dog training restrictions will be strictly enforced. These activities will be limited to a maximum of three nights a week.
The financial base of the raccoon subsystem will come from schools, memberships, tours, individual guests on the area, volunteer work (in-kind salary equivalents), workshops, publications, photo opportunities (for a fee), art commissions, sale of harvested products (glands, bones, biological instruction kits), and new products and services of the Pest Force. Links with dog owners need to be made.
This is viewed as a start-up action group with expansion possibilities. A relatively small amount of start-up equipment and transportation are required. Office and computer support with marketing are anticipated from System Central.
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This Web site is maintained by R. H.
Giles, Jr.
Last revision January 17, 2000.