conservation program


"Conservation on the ground" best describes the Station's Conservation Program. Adaptive management practices along with feedback from research helps direct conservation priorities. OSBS has a mosaic of habitats such as sandhill, baygalls, marsh lakes, xeric hammock, basin swamp, clastic upland lakes, upland mixed forest, basin marsh, and sandhill upland lakes. This diversity of communities offers a wide array of habitats and organisms for study. Approximately 516 species of plants and 284 species of vertebrates have been catalogued for the Station and of these, 26 are fish, 27 are amphibians, 45 are reptiles, 149 are birds, and 35 are mammals. The Florida mouse, Sherman fox squirrel, eastern indigo snake, gopher tortoise, striped newt, rosemary wolf spider, bald eagle, gopher frog, and black bear are some examples of species that frequent the site. Cataloging of invertebrate species is ongoing.

Prescribed Fire
As in many of Florida's pyrogenic communities, prescribed fire is our primary conservation tool used to maintain the natural fire regimes. Prescribed fire, also known as controlled burning, is the skillful application of fire to wildland fuels in either their natural or modified state, under specified environmental conditions which allow the fire to be confined to a predetermined area and at the same time to produce the intensity of heat and rate of spread required to attain planned resource management objectives. A combination of dormant and growing season prescribed burns as well as lightening ignited fires are utilized to maintain the longleaf pine-wiregrass community on the Station. The fire program integrates habitat management with education/training and research as often as possible. An example of this is the annually mentoring opportunity for students to participate on prescribed fires with wildland fire professionals from the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center at Ordway-Swisher in the winter and early spring months.

Resource Management Support Team (RMST)
The Station has established a partnership with The Nature Conservancy to house their 4 person support team. The RMST personnel are highly trained and certified in wildland fire management following National Interagency Coordinating Group (NWCG) standards. They are also trained in exotic-invasive plant control techniques. The RMST can assist and augment local site managers in the implementation of their resource management priorities. Local site managers are expected to provide the burn plan, own burn boss and minimum staff and equipment to accomplish projects. The geographic extent of where the RMST works is roughly from the north side of greater Orlando to the Georgia border, and includes the principal ridge systems straddling the St. Johns River. The RMST is available to assist with the whole process from planning, to site preparation, to conducting the burn, and monitoring the results. Other resource management support is invasive plant detection and treatment, monitoring and possibly wildlife surveys, depending on partner needs and requests as well as wildfire suppression as needed. If your agency would like to use the RMST, please contact Parker Titus at OSBS and he can discuss what services they can provide.