Refuge Is Proving That Man Can Erase Scars From Land

The Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge celebrates its 50th birthday this weekend after proving for half a century that eroded, worn-out farmland can become prime wildlife habitat.

The 35,000-acre refuge in Jones County, 20 miles north of Macon, provides opportunities for hiking, picnicking and bird watching, but during the hunting seasons it becomes one of the state’s premier destinations for sportsmen. Last season, more than 14,000 hunters applied for permits to hunt deer on the refuge; several hundred winners are selected by public drawing.

Firearms hunters have taken more than 1,000 deer off the refuge each of the last three or four years, said Ronnie Shell, refuge manager.

About the only outdoor activity not allowed on the Piedmont is overnight camping. It is used for teacher workshops, school groups, Scouts and students ranging from elementary level to graduate researchers from Mercer, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

“We are doing non-game research work, trying to learn more about the critters we’re managing here,” Shell said.

The Piedmont is a mixed pine and hardwood forest with streams and nearly 1,000 acres of man- and beaver-made ponds.

“Not counting fish, there are 330 vertebrate species on the refuge. About 200 are birds,” Shell said.

When the refuge was created by an executive order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, it was nearly a wasteland. The purpose of the refuge was to show how land could be restored and managed for wildlife.

After Union troops raided the area in 1864, its plantation economy never recovered. Subsistence farmers tilled much of the land until World War I, and a soaring demand for cotton brought that crop back to middle Georgia.

But one-crop farming stripped the land of its fertility. The boll weevil and drought of the 1930s resulted in severe erosion.

The farmers, like the wildlife they had displaced, disappeared.

Says a history of the refuge: “Deer, beaver and turkey were gone. The large predators had been long ago wiped out. Little evidence of squirrels, rabbits, raccoon, skunk or opossum was evident. Only some upland birds were left. Two wood ducks were seen in 1939.”

Some farms, abandoned in the 1870s, already were returning to forest when the refuge was created.

With help from the Civilian Conservation Corps and Work Projects Administration, stone and brush dams were built and grass and brush planted to check erosion.

Three beavers were released in 1940. In 1942, a lone deer was seen on the north end of the refuge. Seven more beavers were released in 1944, along with 60 deer from Wisconsin, the Georgia coast and the Carolinas. A dozen South Carolina turkeys were stocked about the same time.

Stands of pine are burned every three years to keep down undesirable varieties of bushes and shrubs. The oldest tracts of pine are needed by the red cockaded woodpecker, an endangered species.

“While most populations of red cockaded woodpecker have declined, this population has remained steady and perhaps added a few colonies,” Shell said.

On land where two wood ducks were seen in 1939, about 1,200 wood ducks are hatched each year, many in nesting boxes put up around the ponds, he said.

“Today, we have all successional stages, from young fields, young pine to old pine, which is one of the most scarce forests in the Southeast right now,” Shell said.