Most likely, yes. We’re now in the “prescribed burn” season—late winter and spring.  The Commission uses controlled, low-level flames to restore and maintain wildlife habitat on most of the 2 million acres of state game lands used by hunters, anglers and wildlife watchers.

In North Carolina, prescribed burning is commonly conducted between January and March, when most trees are less active metabolically. Repeated burns conducted during the spring growing season eventually kill hardwood sprouts, allowing a diversity of native grasses, herbs and wildflowers to develop. These herbaceous plants are typically more valuable than hardwood sprouts for food and cover for wildlife. Without prescribed burns, wildlife in some habitats may experience low reproduction and eventual displacement. READ MORE

 

What’s scarier than bats at Halloween? A world without bats, that’s what. While bats may get a bad rap, they are hugely important in the ecosystem, playing key roles in keeping us healthy and well fed. Consider this:  Bats eat tons of insects, like mosquitoes that can carry diseases that make us sick. A nursing female bat may consume almost her entire body weight in insects in one night.  Bats are important pollinators and seed spreaders, both of which aid in plant reproduction and forest regrowth. But bats are in trouble. BIG trouble because of a deadly disease known as white-nose syndrome. It has killed millions of bats in the eastern United States, including bats in western North Carolina. Some bat hibernacula — caves and mines — in western North Carolina have seen dramatic population declines although these declines associated with the deadly disease appear to be leveling off in some areas. White-nose syndrome, a...

Those fast-flying, tiny jewels of the sky are back. Ruby-throated hummingbirds are now showing up at feeders around the state, having spent the long, cold winter in Mexico and Central America. At one time, they could be found in North Carolina only in the spring through fall; however, with the rise of backyard feeders, many hummingbirds decide to stay throughout the winter, mainly along the coast. The ruby-throated hummingbird is the only hummingbird species that nests in the eastern part of North America. These hummingbirds prefer to breed and nest in deciduous forests, mixed woodlands and sometimes pine forests, and can often be found nesting in wooded residential areas. They typically build small nests of lichens and spider webs that are small in comparison to other birds’ nests — approximately 1 to 2 inches high and 1½ inches wide. They build their nests on tree limbs that can range from 1 to 60 feet off the ground. Anyone who has ever set up a...

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And where there’s fire, at least on a N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission game land, there’s usually a prescribed burn — one of the best and most cost-effective methods of managing habitat for wildlife. A prescribed burn, or an intentional burning of vegetation under strict and specific circumstances, helps restore and maintain wildlife habitat. It is a cost-effective tool that Commission staff uses to create and maintain suitable and ample wildlife habitat in old fields, native grasslands and open-canopy woodlands on game lands throughout the state. The most common prescribed burns Commission staff conducts are restoration burns and maintenance burns. Restoration burns, as their name implies, are done on fire-dependent habitats that haven’t been burned in years. These habitats include longleaf, shortleaf, pond, table mountain and pitch pine forests, hardwood glades and savannahs, prairies, and...

Written by: Brad Howard Have you seen this picture in an email or on Facebook lately?  We have! This photo has been passed around to numerous folks over the last month with claims that it has been taken in various locations across North Carolina.  More recently, some attention was given to a few reports of “a black panther” in Stokes County. There were no photographs or other verifiable evidence to support those reports. While very rare, jaguars, leopards, the jaguarundi and even bobcats can have black coats but there has never been a documented occurrence of a melanistic phase (black) cougar in North America. So, any report of a “black panther” or a “large black cat” is most likely mistaken identity since only the above-mentioned cats have a black phase and only one of those cats is native, the bobcat. The black phase in bobcats is extraordinarily rare. Determining if it were a bobcat would not be that hard. While...