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Located in eastern Georgia, near Augusta, Fort Gordon covers 56,000 acres on the Fall Line. Its streams, ponds, and longleaf pine forests provide important habitat for a wide range of plants and animals like sandhill rosemary and the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. Carolina bogmint and sweet pitcher plants grow along the streams, which harbor Savannah darters and blue-barred pygmy sunfish. In the savannas, woodlands, and forests of the installation live rare and imperiled species like the state-threatened gopher tortoise, Bachman’s sparrow, and Rafinesque’s big-eared bats.
Primarily a communications training center for the U.S. Army, Fort Gordon’s management strategy has been to maintain natural vegetation as realistic cover for field training missions. This policy dovetails well with Conservancy goals. However some incompatible management practices like the suppression of natural fire and the fragmentation of habitat by roads and firebreaks have taken a toll on the area’s natural diversity.
The Conservancy has worked with Army personnel since 1995 to preserve the Fort’s natural communities and their inhabitants. Beginning with ecological management planning, the Conservancy’s role soon expanded to include natural community classification and identification. Prescribed burns have been used to restore fire-dependent longleaf pine forests. Since 1996 managers have burned an average of 15,000 acres each year.
Nature picture credits (left to right): Longleaf pine forest © Mark Godfrey; Red Cockaded Woodpecker © T. Kevin Crawford.
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