In an effort to better educate our customers and let them see into our world, Patriot LWM will begin to release video blogs outlining projects we have been working on and things on the horizon.
Here is a short clip of a beaver management technique for a property where the owner decided to utilize trapping as a damage mitigation technique. Beaver damage was experienced on many trees in the property’s creek watershed area which allowed waters to rise into the neighboring agricultural fields.
Posted in Agriculture, Videos, Wildlife Management
Tagged agriculture, beaver, beaver problem, land management, nuisance, tree damage, wildlife management
Monday August 15, 2011 was the opening week of the 63rd Montgomery County Agricultural Fair in Gaithersburg, MD. The Agricultural Leaders’ Luncheon was held in the Heritage Garden Room of the Fairgrounds the same day, sponsored by the Board of Directors of the Montgomery County Agricultural Center, the University of Maryland Extension, and the Montgomery County Agricultural Services Division.
Attendees included Maryland Secretary of Agriculture, Buddy Hance, County Executive, Ike Leggett, several Congressional, Delegate, and County Council office representatives, members of various agricultural committees, various organizations and agencies like the Maryland Farm Bureau, NRCS, Montgomery County Soil Conservation District, USDA, The University of Maryland, as well as local farmers. Parts of the meal were provided by many different local farmers, giving everyone a taste of what Montgomery County agriculture has to offer.
The Luncheon was held in recognition of the strong leadership in the Montgomery County Agricultural Community and its purpose was to bring together people within Montgomery County’s agricultural industry to share the successes of our vital agricultural economy and also to share some concerns. Several agricultural leadership awards were presented, an update on Agricultural Preservation was offered, and a presentation from the Agricultural Advisory Committee was given. Within this presentation were updates on the Montgomery County Deer Donation program and the successes it has achieved over the last 7 years. Patriot LWM manages this particular program and the support of the agricultural community, agencies, and organizations within the County have allowed it to blossom into a truly beneficial and successful program for Montgomery County.
For more information about the Montgomery County Deer Donation Program, please visit http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/agstmpl.asp?url=/content/ded/agservices/aginitiatives.asp#deer
Posted in Agriculture, Patriot LWM News
Tagged agriculture, deer, deer management, doe, quality deer management, wildlife management
Just a few weeks ago, in late July, Patriot LWM volunteer Holger Kray of Darnestown, MD put out some trail cameras at a Patriot LWM managed property in Darnestown – one that is blessed with a variety of wildlife, but suffers from a significant degree of trespassing and poaching. A few days later, Holger returned to gather the camera and see what pictures it had taken. Unexpectedly, he got one picture of an early morning invader that no one really expected to see in this suburban area, and no, it wasn’t a sasquatch. As land and wildlife managers, it is our job to keep our eyes peeled and ears tuned in to what is going on and informing our clients and communities of what we see and experience, and offer our professional opinion. It’s amazing how social media keeps us informed - from trail camera picture, to a Tweet, to a news story in just hours….Take a quick minute for a great read posted in the NorthPotomac-Darnestown Patch!
“Coyotes don’t normally pose a threat to people, but there’s always a risk.”
By Glynis Kazanjian
August 4, 2011
A coyote was caught on film roaming the grounds of a private farm in Darnestown in the early morning hours of July 31. Holger Kray, a Darnestown resident and volunteer with Patriot Land and Wildlife Management, said he set up a trail camera there, along with various other properties in the area.
Patriot LWM helps landowners with environmental improvements and wildlife management.
Kray sent the photo of the coyote out in a Tweet earlier today. He said he didn’t do it to alarm anyone.
“We’ve had several sightings of coyotes,” Kray said. “It’s fascinating to inform residents of the beautiful and diverse wildlife in a suburban area. I’m a true wildlife enthusiast.”
Kray said coyotes are present in the area, but should not be considered dangerous to human beings, including children. His neighbor spotted one four weeks ago on Berryville Road in Darnestown, and his wife saw one on their property last year.
Kray said coyotes are here as a natural migration and that they are afraid of humans.
“Their first choice is to run away from humans. This is why you hardly ever see a coyote. They feed on small rodents, on little deer and human beings should not be afraid of them. The same holds true for foxes, dogs and cats.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the government agency that manages coyote sightings in the state, said there is no available estimate for how many coyotes there are in the county, only that coyotes have a presence in every county of the state.
“It is a very rare and exciting experience to see a coyote. People normally don’t get to,” said Patricia Allen, Wildlife and Heritage Information Manager at DNR. “Coyotes don’t normally pose a threat to people, but like any wild animal, there’s always a risk.”
Allen said wild creatures are allowed to roam freely, but there are biologists at DNR who study their behavior. There are also two hunting seasons for coyotes: the firearm, bow and crossbow season, from October 15 to March 15, and the trapping season which runs from November 1 to January 19 in Montgomery County.
County residents who are concerned about coyotes may call the DNR nuisance hotline at 1-877-463-6497.
To view the Patch website story, please visit http://northpotomac.patch.com/articles/coyote-spotted-in-darnestown#c
Posted in Agriculture, Deer Management, Habitat Improvement, Patriot LWM News, Property Management, Wildlife Management
Tagged agriculture, community, coyote, Darnestown, deer, deer management, doe, hunting, North Potomac, nuisance, Patch, Patriot LWM, quality deer management, suburban, wildlife management
The University of Maryland Cooperative Extension Office has posted all the presentations and information from last months “Suburban Deer Management: Options and Choices for Decision-Makers” of which Patriot Land & Wildlife President Joe Brown was a guest speaker. The Forestry Resources Website has all the information you could need when it comes to making an educated decision regarding your suburban deer management issues.
A few years ago, Patriot Land and Wildlife was fortunate to be involved with an innovative water quailty improvement project in Washington, DC on the Anacostia River. Teamed with Bluewing Environmental Solutions and Technologies, Patriot LWM helped install several BioHaven Floating Treatment Wetlands at Diamond Teague Park in DC, with the intention of providing much-needed water quality improvement. These BioHaven islands are capable of removing as many nutrients from the waterbody as 6 acres of natural wetlands.
Diamond Teague is just across the street from the Washington Nationals baseball stadium and is a popular riverside destination for ballpark patrons, among others. The dual functionaility of water quality stewardship and ornamental landscaping allowed for a great project to occur, and lots of attention drawn to the problems suffered by our waterways. Author Mike Cronin of “The Daily” spotlights the project.
The Kanias founded their company in 2005. Today they have seven manufacturers worldwide and 4,000 islands in use around the globe. Customers pay roughly $27 per square foot and may order any shape or size of floating island, which can be used in rivers, ponds, lakes and even the ocean.
Kevin Hedge, a wetland scientist and partner at Blue Wing, sees the synthetic islands as more than just a savior to an ailing environment.
“The floating islands are an ecological-restoration tool that also can be an economic-recovery tool,” he said.
Lanshing Hwang, the Maryland landscape architect who designed the island park in Washington, called it “an innovative approach — particularly for places that don’t have wetlands.
It has long been known that an overpopulation of deer has negative effects on your vehicle when they wander into the roadway infront of you, or your flowers when the deer make their way to your yard, but a study from the Smithsonian’s Conservation Biology Institute is pinning a new victim on this overpopulation, our forests. Biologists looked at the effects of deer overpopulation on forest regeneration and how that relates to the growth of invasive species of plants. What they found is sure to be a wake up call for the ecological community who must now look at wildlife management as another tool to protect and ensure the health of their natural community.
Story from WAMU.org:
A world with deer (left) versus a world without them (right). The difference is stark and extends from the ground to the canopy -- birds, mice, and chipmunks are more abundant without deer. Courtesy of: Xiaoli Shen
Deer Overpopulation Yields Disastrous Results For Forests
May 23, 2011 – As an ever-rising population of white-tailed deer have bumped up against their human neighbors in the D.C. area, the results haven’t been pretty. There were an estimated 88,000 deer-vehicle collisions in Virginia, Maryland, D.C., and Delaware last year.
Dozens of species, some relatively rare, flourish without deer to munch on them. Importantly, young trees are able to survive too. When old trees die, there are plenty of saplings waiting in the wings to take their place -- not so in a forest of overpopulated deer. Courtesy of: Xiaoli Shen
But beyond the roads, experts say the deer are also having a major impact on forests, which are unable to replenish themselves to nurture the next generation due to the deer population’s eating habits.
To illustrate this decline in forests during the past several years, a group of scientists blocked off a chunk of woods to the deer more than two decades ago.
It’s called an exclosure, and it’s a place where no deer have trod for decades. Back in 1990, scientists at the Smithsonian’s Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va., closed off 10 acres of forest with 8-foot high fences to see how the land would evolve without its furry friends.
“So we’re comparing inside the fence to the outside the fence,” says Bill McShea, a wildlife ecologist at SCBI. “And there’s two things of note. One is, it’s green on both sides of the fence but in here it’s a lot more diverse than out there.”
That is an understatement. The deer side of the fence has a carpet of grass, a shrubby looking thing and some large trees — things that are either too big for deer to eat or among the very few plants they don’t like to eat.
Inside is practically a jungle, with dozens of different almost exotic looking plants are tumbling over one another, many of them young trees.
“In here I can see white ash and hickory and red maples and white maples and serviceberry,” McShea says. “A whole bunch of under story and canopy trees that are all now three or four feet tall. We are looking at 20, 30 species. There’s a lot of diversity in here. You look out there, and it’s a much simpler world.”
That simpler world is an aging world. Really, it’s a dying world as far as forests go.
“The future is not good. There are no teenagers, there’s no young adults,” McShea says of the trees and other foliage. “Everybody’s a mature individual. Whereas, inside this fence you have the complete profile of ages. You have youngsters, you have teenagers, you have middle-aged adults, you have the old trees.
“And when the old trees go — and they’re going to go, because that’s what happens with old trees, they fall over — there is something here to take its place,” McShea says. “Out there, I don’t see anything out there that’s a small tree.”
These results of the exclosure, although striking, are what scientists could have predicted. One of the surprising things they found, however, is that deer allow invasive species to flourish.
“The Japanese stilt grass is just coming up now as a highly invasive annual grass,” says Norm Bourg, a plant ecologist with SCBI.
The Japanese-origin grass carpets the floor outside the exclosure, but inside, there are many more native species present.
“There’s a lot of native species like horse balm,” Bourg says, gesturing to the plants beneath his feet. “This is black cohosh, which is a native medicinal plant that you hardly ever see out there.”
With fewer native plants outside the exclosure, there are fewer birds there that depend on them for nests and food, and there are also fewer mice and chipmunks when they have to compete with deer.
But it wasn’t always this way. One hundred years ago, deer were nearly extinct in Maryland and extremely rare in Virginia.
“By that time, you couldn’t find a deer or a turkey or a bear in the state,” McShea says. “Both the habitat changes and the restaurant trade eliminated most of those animals.”
Today’s ubiquitous food trend of “buying local” was the norm back then, and hunting was an industry, says McShea.
“They weren’t going to put a cow on a train in Texas and ship it to Virginia,” McShea says. “If you were going to go to a restaurant, order yourself a steak, for the most part that was a venison steak.”
In the early part of the 1900′s, newly minted state game departments rushed to the rescue, banning or regulating hunting and setting up parks.
“When they made the Shenandoah Park in the 1930s, they went and got deer from Arkansas and brought them back here to repopulate that area,” says McShea. “So growing the deer population was intentional. It’s a conservation story and it went just like they planned.”
The result is that today, there are several million deer, and, as McShea puts it, “the flip side has happened.
“They’re hitting too many cars, there’s too much gardens being eaten, the forest succession is changing,” he continues. “We’ve got to dial that back a little bit.
Deer aren’t evil, McShea is quick to emphasize, but they have no predators now and they need to be managed. States currently rely primarily on scheduled hunts, where the public is allowed to come in and take out deer.
That works well on parkland to some extent, but it doesn’t work on private property or in federal parks, which have been slower to adopt aggressive management.
“We have time for that, we don’t have to make a decision this year,” he says. But we don’t have decades, he adds. Trees don’t live forever.
Usually, species compete for light. But where there are too many deer, they compete on the basis of deer resistance. Few species are unpalatable to deer, so few species prevail and they tend to be invasive. Courtesy of: Xiaoli Shen
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