OLDTOWN — In March, Jim Mullan was one of the state employees who intentionally set fire to grasses on the Warrior Mountain Wildlife Management Area.
On Tuesday, almost five months after the rapid and intense blaze, Mullan, the western regional manager for the Maryland Wildlife & Heritage Service, stood in that same field and admired the results of the handiwork done by his agency and the Maryland Forest Service.
Specifically, Mullan was checking out the big bluestem grass that seeks to grow almost as high as an elephant’s eye during the spring and summer.
“There is also switchgrass and Indian grass that has come back in,” he said, fondling the flora a couple hundred yards off Oliver Beltz Road.
“This (10-acre) field is managed for wildlife habitat, specifically upland wildlife and the recreation that goes along with it,” Mullan said. “Good wildlife habitat consists of food, water and cover that are close together.”
The real benefactors of this hands-on wildlife management are ground nesting birds — ranging in size from wild turkeys to sparrows — and mammals such as cottontail rabbits and voles.
“But deer use this habitat too,” Mullan said, “and it wouldn’t be unusual for a bear to be seen here.”
In 2011, as a part of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s Forest Brigade Program, the Forest Service, assisted by state prison inmates, planted numerous trees that will eventually augment the cover and food within the field. For now, those young trees are protected in plastic tubes.
The trees include white pine, Virginia pine, Eastern red cedar, black cherry, black oak and chestnut oak.
The Warrior Mountain WMA encompasses 4,672 acres, 5 percent of which is in fields and grasses. It lies mostly between Oliver Beltz and Cresap Mill roads.
A variety of public access points are available for hunters and other users.
“We acquired this field 10 years ago. It was pasture then and you could look up at it from the road and see every nook and cranny in the land,” Mullan said. That’s no longer true, the grasses of varying height give wildlife plenty of cover to shield them from long-range viewing.
Controlled burns are to improve wildlife habitat, but Mullan said they have been shut down when nesting turkeys have been found in the area meant to go up in smoke.
This year’s burn, though, came off pretty much picture perfect. When the grasses thicken in two or three more years and lose their value for wildlife, the torch will be lit once more.
Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.
Michael A Sawyers - Outdoors
Related Photos
-
In the March file photo at left, Nick Stonesifer, a technician with the Maryland Wildlife & Heritage Service, sets fire to grasses on the Warrior Mountain Wildlife Mike Sawyers/Times-News
-
anagement Area. At right, in a photo taken Tuesday, Regional Manager Jim Mullan checks some of the warm season grasses that have flourished since then. Mike Sawyers/Times-News
Wildlife grasses spring forth after controlled burn in March
- Michael A Sawyers - Outdoors
-
-
Md. has greater natural resources police presence than W.Va., Pa.
Whether you hunt and fish
in West Virginia, Pennsylvania,
Maryland or all three,
I’m sure
you have
heard the
lament that
more natural
resources
police officers
are
needed. -
FEATHERED NIRVANA
They’ve started, you know. The gobbler seasons.
Well, actually, one has, that being Maryland, and two will, one in West Virginia tomorrow and then another in Pennsylvania soon after that. -
Bill that would up cost of Md. hunting license dies
The senators and delegates who converge on Annapolis each January and stay there for three months as they decide how we should live our lives would do well to subscribe to a portion of the Hippocratic Oath taken by physicians.
-
The size of the fight in the dog
At the beginning of my book, “Native Queen,” there is an author’s note in which I point out that I believe, as did my father, that there are three seasons in a year, not four.
-
New W.Va. doe hunt works out
The new, three-day, October, firearms hunt for antlerless deer instituted by the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources accounted for a harvest of 3,525 animals, according to Chris Ryan, supervisor of Game Management Services.
-
W.Va. ag chief has coyote plan
The only thing I can figure is that Walt Helmick has been watching the Diamond Jim thing unfold in Maryland during the past several years.
-
SMILE You just might be standing in front of somone’s trail camera
I admit to a little bit of obsessive behavior, though in my mind I am still within the normal range.
-
Bird dog survives killer trap, keeps hunting
Bari is one lucky 33-pound, female French Brittany spaniel, having survived unfazed the jaws of a Conibear trap this past November near Piney Reservoir in eastern Garrett County.
-
These are spring’s true harbingers
Unfortunately, there is a chronological coefficient to energy, otherwise I would be primed and raring to go for the upcoming season of Hillbilly Surf and Turf, the dynamic duo of hunting and fishing, the cool combination of feathers and fins.
-
All points bulletin! Deer antler bill introduced at Md. General Assembly
If House Bill 990 passes the Maryland General Assembly and gets signed by the governor, people who hunt deer in Garrett County will all become trophy hunters.
- More Michael A Sawyers - Outdoors Headlines
-
