Blue Goose ~ Day 252

February 3, 2015 ~ Athens, GA to Newnan, GA

I felt I had given Georgia short shrift which is why I decided to visit Piedmont NWR in the middle of the state even though it meant driving a couple hundred miles. Out west, 200 miles between refuges was common but east of the Mississippi, not so.

I got there early afternoon, and as I drove up the road to the beautiful VC, I had to wait for logging trucks, one pulling out with a full load of mature trees and one empty truck waiting for the loaded one to leave. Hmmm? It was incongruous to enter a refuge and be greeted by logging trucks. But at the other end of the welcome spectrum, when I turned into the parking lot proper, I saw a dozen birds pecking away at the pavement; half were Chipping and White-crowned Sparrows and half were Pine Warblers, their yellow-olive backs and prominent wing-bars showing brightly against the black background. It was unexpected to see warblers scrounging on the ground in small groups with sparrows.

Pine Warbler at Piedmont NWR - GA

The refuge is 95% healthy forest again but with the familiar history of poor land stewardship. The first European settlers usually clear-cut for agriculture and planted crops which often weren't sustainable. Here in the Piedmont, the heavily used soil wore out, eroded and was abandoned following the Civil War, a boll weevil infestation and the Great Depression. There is evidence on the refuge though of the old homesteads and the 30 cemeteries of those who once lived here. In the spring, one can see blooming flowers and shrubs that the women planted around their homes.

WWW.FWS.GOV

Piedmont NWR was established in 1939 as a "combination wildlife and game-manangement demonstration area" to demonstrate that wildlife could be restored on worn out, eroded lands. Ira Gabrielson, Chief of the Bureau of Biological Survey, predecessor agency of the US Fish & Wildlife Service, selected Piedmont from a list of Resettlement Projects. He stated that if the Bureau could take a piece of completely worn out and useless land, like Piedmont was at the time, and make it into a productive wildlife area, then he would know that any kind of land could be managed for wildlife. 

The refuge is "extractive" in that it is open to hunters for turkey, deer, raccoon and opossum, but then, I have discovered that most refuges are extractive in some way. It has 45 miles of gravel roads as refuge management includes logging and burning, both tools for creating and maintaining habitat for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker. Piedmont has 39 clusters or clans of RCWs.

It also has rearing ponds for an endangered fish, the Robust Redhorse Sucker and has at least 92 butterfly species. There are ponds for wintering waterfowl. Two hundred species of migratory and resident birds use Piedmont NWR.

A pleasant staff member answered any questions I had and explained that the logging adjacent to the refuge entry was on private land and that they were going to take "all of it."

I left and spent the night 30 miles south of Atlanta, close enough to be in the busy outlying traffic. When I woke up the next morning, I was in a truck corral, with a dozen semis all around me. It was warmer and I slept well...or well enough.