Oak Hammock Marsh - Management

Management

The marsh is a re-constructed and managed wetland, designed for the creation of a waterfowl breeding and migratory habitat. Water levels in the marsh are carefully controlled. It is common during wet years (when waterfowl have an abundance of alternative nesting sites) for the water level in one or more of the compartments to be lowered for the summer, creating an extensive area of dried mudflats. This drying and later reflooding promotes the growth of emergent marsh plants such as bulrush and cattail, and therefore maintains the vegetation cover of the marsh; otherwise, the natural tendency would be for the marsh to become over several years simply a shallow lake, with a sharply defined shoreline and little nesting cover. Furthermore, not all of the adjacent purchased land has been allowed to grow wild. Cereal grain crops are planted in some of it, in order to supply migrating waterfowl with an autumn food supply while reducing crop losses on local farms.

Read more about this topic:  Oak Hammock Marsh

Famous quotes containing the word management:

    Why not draft executive and management brains to prepare and produce the equipment the $21-a-month draftee must use and forget this dollar-a-year tommyrot? Would we send an army into the field under a dollar-a-year General who had to be home Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?
    Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    The Management Area of Cherokee
    National Forest, interested in fish,
    Has mapped Tellico and Bald Rivers
    And North River, with the tributaries
    Brookshire Branch and Sugar Cove Creed:
    A fishy map for facile fishery....
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    The care of a house, the conduct of a home, the management of children, the instruction and government of servants, are as deserving of scientific treatment and scientific professors and lectureships as are the care of farms, the management of manure and crops, and the raising and care of stock.
    Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)