Uploaded April 2019 | Updated September 2026, 9 hours ago
What really happened, what triggered that decline was: we stopped burning. The natural progression of fire in the landscape was stopped. There was this whole Smokey the Bear initiative and everything. Now we've come around, but in that time period of fifty years or more the country was more divided up, you had roadways and stuff like that, that would stop backing fires.
Fire actually kept the uplands pretty free of litter. These are pretty sandy permeable uplands so the rain that would fall on the uplands would just soak in. Because it's white sand there's almost no nutrient in the soil. So you have this seepage soil which is nutrient poor which is an ideal place for carnivorous plants. In the slopes, the kind of gentle topography, whereever it sloped away, water would seep out. Centrally, in these seep areas, these little creeks and streams carry the water to the Coastal Dune Lakes and then out into the Gulf of Mexico.
The lack of fire allowed wetland hardwoods, that previously had mostly stayed in the shrub stage, to actually take over. There wasn't the pruning by fire. The lack of fire also allowed duff and litter to build up in the uplands so that when the water percolates down, it carries nutrients with it. The titi loves nutrients but the pitcher plants and orchids and other plants don't need it. So now you've eliminated the pruning of these hardwood plants and you're also feeding them. They begin to grow better. Now they start shading all the herbaceous plants. So everything is suppressed on the herbaceous side. Stimulates the growth of this unnatural stand of woody plants.
What we're doing in this project is taking out all of that titi. Clearing it so that the ground can again be open to the sun to stimulate the herbaceous component. We're trying to restore the whole sweep of plants. The focal species are these orchids, pitcher plants, butterworts and sundews but we're managing for the natural community. We're trying to get a herbaceous-dominated community back. Now it is in an unnatural state of closed canopy hardwood with two or three species instead of 50 species.
What we're driving through right now is Sandhill: Turkey Oaks, Longleaf Pine. This is sort of a catchment area. We can have up to 70 inches of rain a year in the Panhandle. Except when you have really sustained tropical rain, most everything that falls, soaks right in. We can get to the point where we have surface runoff. But most of the time, all the rain is soaking in. The water level rises up and the topography grades off so it begins to seep right out of there. We're just moving into an area now where there's a north south stream that goes down.
The reason we were able to get funding, you know no oil came up here, the reason we were able to get funding is the water flow that goes out into the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn't only go out of the outlet of the lakes. There's what is called Submarine Groundwater Discharge. This entire landscape was percolating water through sandy soil. It goes under the dunes, and out into this shallow incline out the sandy surface. So if you go down in the sand, the salinity is 0. It's fresh water. And up here (above) it's 3 parts per thousand. At this level (below) there's this flat estuary, this interface between fresh and salt water. Because the Coastal Dune Lakes are utilized by Snowy Plovers and other shorebirds as nesting areas. Those birds are listed and their populations are in trouble. The oil spill damaged those bird populations. So we got the funding to do this. That was a hook.
What really happened, what triggered that decline was: we stopped burning. The natural progression of fire in the landscape was stopped. There was this whole Smokey the Bear initiative and everything. Now we've come around, but in that time period of fifty years or more the country was more divided up, you had roadways and stuff like that, that would stop backing fires.
Fire actually kept the uplands pretty free of litter. These are pretty sandy permeable uplands so the rain that would fall on the uplands would just soak in. Because it's white sand there's almost no nutrient in the soil. So you have this seepage soil which is nutrient poor which is an ideal place for carnivorous plants. In the slopes, the kind of gentle topography, whereever it sloped away, water would seep out. Centrally, in these seep areas, these little creeks and streams carry the water to the Coastal Dune Lakes and then out into the Gulf of Mexico.
The lack of fire allowed wetland hardwoods, that previously had mostly stayed in the shrub stage, to actually take over. There wasn't the pruning by fire. The lack of fire also allowed duff and litter to build up in the uplands so that when the water percolates down, it carries nutrients with it. The titi loves nutrients but the pitcher plants and orchids and other plants don't need it. So now you've eliminated the pruning of these hardwood plants and you're also feeding them. They begin to grow better. Now they start shading all the herbaceous plants. So everything is suppressed on the herbaceous side. Stimulates the growth of this unnatural stand of woody plants.
What we're doing in this project is taking out all of that titi. Clearing it so that the ground can again be open to the sun to stimulate the herbaceous component. We're trying to restore the whole sweep of plants. The focal species are these orchids, pitcher plants, butterworts and sundews but we're managing for the natural community. We're trying to get a herbaceous-dominated community back. Now it is in an unnatural state of closed canopy hardwood with two or three species instead of 50 species.
What we're driving through right now is Sandhill: Turkey Oaks, Longleaf Pine. This is sort of a catchment area. We can have up to 70 inches of rain a year in the Panhandle. Except when you have really sustained tropical rain, most everything that falls, soaks right in. We can get to the point where we have surface runoff. But most of the time, all the rain is soaking in. The water level rises up and the topography grades off so it begins to seep right out of there. We're just moving into an area now where there's a north south stream that goes down.
The reason we were able to get funding, you know no oil came up here, the reason we were able to get funding is the water flow that goes out into the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn't only go out of the outlet of the lakes. There's what is called Submarine Groundwater Discharge. This entire landscape was percolating water through sandy soil. It goes under the dunes, and out into this shallow incline out the sandy surface. So if you go down in the sand, the salinity is 0. It's fresh water. And up here (above) it's 3 parts per thousand. At this level (below) there's this flat estuary, this interface between fresh and salt water. Because the Coastal Dune Lakes are utilized by Snowy Plovers and other shorebirds as nesting areas. Those birds are listed and their populations are in trouble. The oil spill damaged those bird populations. So we got the funding to do this. That was a hook.
