Arkansas Sportsman

Greentree reservoir management must change

After at least a decade of hand-wringing, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is intent on changing the way it manages water in its greentree reservoirs.

Judging from their response at a recent meeting in Little Rock, hunters seem to accept the changes are inevitable and even necessary.

The commission held a series of public meetings around the state to discuss water management at the greentree reservoirs. A panel consisting of Luke Naylor, the AGFC's waterfowl biologist; Martin Blaney, the AGFC's forester; Brad Carner, chief of the AGFC's wildlife management division; and Mickey Heitmeyer, a noted wetlands expert, presented information and fielded questions from the public.

About 60 hunters attended the Little Rock meeting and were engaged and informed. The meeting was scheduled to end at 8 p.m., but was still going strong at 9 p.m. when it finally ended.

Naylor, whose voice was hoarse from talking at previous meetings, presented an overwhelming amount of information in the form of graphs, tables, photos and narrative. The summary is that the historical model of water management on GTRs is detrimental to forest health, and it is unsustainable.

To illustrate what can and what will probably happen at places such as Black River and Bayou Meto wildlife management areas, Naylor showed a slide of a devastated portion of Galla Creek WMA. It was once a vibrant forest of cherrybark oak and other desirable red oak species, but improper water management killed the entire bottomland portion of the forest. It cannot be restored, Blaney said, and after an expensive attempt to rehabilitate it, the AGFC conceded defeat.

It is so badly silted in that a surveyor struggled to locate the creek channel, Blaney said.

With artificial management, water levels in GTRs currently spike from October-February, and again in April and June.

With natural flooding cycles, levels should be variable, with little to no flooding in October two of every three years, and spikes from October-February every third year.

Problems result from flooding red oak trees in October before they have gone dormant, and keeping water on them in the spring when the growth cycle begins. Damage is evident when tree crowns recede, and also from trunk swelling. Eventually, chronically stressed trees die.

Red oaks, especially willow oaks and nuttall oaks, produce small acorns that ducks eat. Overcup oaks, which are flood-tolerant, replace red oaks and produce acorns that are too big for ducks to eat.

Also, water levels in GTRs traditionally have been kept at depths suitable for navigation of aluminum boats with large outboard motors. Waist-deep water is too deep for dabbling ducks like mallards to reach the forest floor where the food is. Invertebrates and edible red oak acorns are in the mud, Naylor said. A floating red oak acorn has no nutritional value, and again, ducks can't eat overcup oak acorns.

The optimum feeding depth for ducks is 12 inches deep or less.

Ducks follow rising water to take advantage of that depth. Duck hunters in the know follow those "feathered edges" as well, Naylor said.

Here's the cold, hard truth. Nearly 70 percent of the willow oaks in the Government Cypress section of Bayou Meto are near death or heavily damaged.

Eventually, the willow oak component will pass a tipping point where it cannot be restored, and the greentree reservoirs will lose much of their value as waterfowl habitat. That is why they exist.

Naylor said that flooding could be influenced by a situation, and that it might not progress on an inflexible schedule.

"We have to look at things like how red oak regeneration is going," Naylor said. "If we see a phenomenal seedling crop, we might want to hold off until the trees get tall enough so they can survive flooding. We have to be adaptive that way."

Conversely, an untimely or prolonged flood can wipe out an entire year's seedling production.

Fortunately, the internet makes it easier and more efficient for the AGFC to get information about flooding schedules to hunters. That allows allows hunters to be more adaptive.

The bottom line is that GTR management will change, and probably sooner than later. There may be times when popular hunting areas will not flood. It is better to be occasionally inconvenienced than to lose the habitat permanently.

Sports on 03/26/2017

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