The Legacy of a Red Hills Hunting Plantation: Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy

Introduction

introduction Tall Timbers Research Station was established in 1958 as a nonprofit biological research station. Land conservation was integrated into scientific research in 1990. Prior to that, it had a long history as a farming and hunting plantation. Part I of this history discusses Henry L. Beadel and those who came before him as stewards of the land we know today as Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy. The home of Henry L. Beadel was known as Tall Timbers Plantation. If you read other histories about this region during Beadel’s ownership, which began in 1919, you will see that like many of the other wealthy plantation owners in the region, Beadel was an avid hunter, drawn to the area for the abundant quail. Like them, Beadel managed his land for quail and burned his woods after hunting season, as was the custom. Beadel and the other owners stopped using fire in the 1920s, after the U.S. Forest Service condemned the practice as harmful to the forest and its wildlife. Without fire, the piney woods became choked with brush and the quail became scarce. This set the stage for Beadel’s evolution from a sportsman and naturalist to a conservationist. Beadel and other plantation owners financed the Cooperative Quail Investigation to find out what had happened to the quail. Herbert Stoddard was brought in to conduct the study. This began a lifelong friendship for Beadel and Stoddard, as both men were naturalists and dedicated ornithologists. The final report for the study was Stoddard ’s book, The Bobwhite Quail: Its Habits, Preservation and Increase, in which there was a chapter on the vital use of fire in the southern pine ecosystems, in particular for quail populations. The chapter planted the seed for an experiment station to research the effects of fire on plant and animal communities. Through the decades of their friendship , this seed would be nurtured by Stoddard, often at Sunday-morning coffee klatches at Birdsong Plantation with the Komareks (Ed, Roy, and Betty). But it was Stoddard’s WCTV Tower Study, which began on Tall Timbers Plantation in mid-1955, that peaked Beadel’s interest in the scientific wildlife research being conducted on his property. This would lead Beadel to commit his property and fortune to the founding of a research facility .OnFebruary7,1958,TallTimbersResearchStation,Inc.wascharteredasaprivate, nonprofit Florida corporation devoted to scientific and educational purposes. Part II of this history is about the first fifty years of Tall Timbers as a research station. The vision of Tall Timbers’ founders was of a research station that would be independent of government and academic funding and control. Long-term research using study plots was their goal. Fire as a forest and wildlife management tool was advocated and promoted, first by Stoddard in his publications and then by Ed Komarek in the fire ecology conferences and proceedings that became a hallmark of Tall Timbers through the years and that brought the research station international attention. This section documents the people and activities of the classic and early long-term studies, the vertebrate xvi · Introduction and invertebrate studies, game bird research, fire and plant ecology, and the Wade Tract Preserve. Part III details the conservation land trust, now known as the Tall Timbers Land Conservancy, from organization to accreditation and discusses the evolution of the administrative organization of Tall Timbers. Finally, the current executive director, Lane Green, considers the future of Tall Timbers in the next fifty years as the organization continues to foster exemplary land stewardship through research, conservation, and education, according to its mission. The history ends with Part IV, which catalogs the holdings and intellectual property oftheorganization,andtheAppendices.AppendicesIthroughIIIincludelistsofBeadel Fellows, past and current Tall Timbers board members, and conferences and publications . Appendix IV includes a list of donors to the Tall Timbers Land Conservancy Endowment,alistofconservationeasementdonorsandtheacreagesoftheirproperties, and maps that show these properties in the Red Hills region and southwest Georgia. Rose Rodriguez Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy ...