Ridge Rangers are volunteers helping to restore wildlife habitat on the Lake Wales Ridge and nearby areas in Central Florida.
January 2015
DEP’s Charlie Cook sends the below holiday appreciation picture to the Ridge Rangers, and would like everyone to know:
“The FWC Invasive Upland Grant Program has approved additional funding for Chinese Tallow Tree control in the upper Peace River for 2015.The successful grant application was significantly based on the prior work of the Ridge Rangers, who have reduced about 40% of the tallow in the project area near Clear Springs over the last few years.Great credit to all of you!”
In the picture: Ridge Ranger Roger Bergere uses a GPS to mark the location of an invasive Chinese Tallow Tree in the Upper Peace River Conservation Area asRidge Ranger Jason Hewitt prepares to cut it down with a chain saw.
We'll be using loppers and hand saws to cut sand pines, slash pines, wax myrtles, and other overgrown shrubs and trees to improve scrub-jay habitat (qualified Ridge Rangers may use provided chain saws) .
Eliminating the intruding trees helps maintain scrub habitat in a natural state preferred by scrub-jays.
We’re experimenting to increase survivability of next summer’s restoration planting, and we’re going to transplant many scrub oak sprouts from tray cells into one gallon pots to allow for greater root growth and more gentle planting … looking for all the transplanting help you’re willing to give!
Afterwards at noon, we’ll enjoy a provided hot dog cookout at the nearby shaded picnic tables.
This workday is part of Project Acorn, a multiyear effort by the Ridge Rangers to gather and pot scrub-oak acorns, maintain the sprouts, and plant the resulting baby oaks in damaged scrub oak habitat on the Lake Wales Ridge.
Prairie Tract of the Lake Wales Ridge State Forest
Tuesday, January 20, 8 am to noon.
We'll be using handsaws, loppers, and chainsaws (for qualified Ridge Rangers) to help restore this habitat by removing invasive guava trees.
Meet at the Forest Service Office on CR 630 East near Frostproof at 8 AM (we'll be moving from there to the Prairie Tract). See http://outreach.myfwc.com/event/PrairieTractJan2015 for the meet location map and to register.
Select conservation sites in Polk & Highlands Counties
Saturday morning, January 24
The Heartland Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area is hosting an Air Potato Mega-Raid on January 24, with specific areas and times are now being finalized. They're requesting volunteer help at all sites.
Participants will be removing air potato plants to help eliminate this major invasive problem.
Ridge Rangers planted 7,000 scrub oak acorns in the Royce restoration area in December 2014, and we placed several monitoring cameras in the area to watch for squirrels ruining all that hard work.
No squirrels seen so far … but this bobcat was very curious about the camera!