Year of the Pig

12. Collateral damage

12 Collateral damage Taking fire out of the longleaf forest is like taking rain out of the rainforest . —Robert J. Mitchell, “Silly Shit I Say All the Time” Hollies (Ilex spp.): There are several hollies in the southeastern United States. The American holly is commonly found on shaded, northfacing slopes and fire-excluded bottomlands. Other hollies, such as gallberry, yaupon, and tall gallberry, are native shrubs or small trees, but they are very invasive in the absence of fire. Hollies will form walls of green brush in fire-excluded longleaf and/or slash pine forests . Their waxy leaves are highly flammable, and large stands of hollies at the rural/urban interface are recipes for disaster. A headfire moving through a pine overstory with a dense holly midstory may produce flame heights of one hundred feet or more. Since many practitioners of prescribed fire are barely closeted pyromaniacs, they secretly smile when given the challenge of using fire to knock down a dense growth of hollies. In prescribed burner terminology, this practice is referred to as “reducing the fuel load.” The meeting in Virginia wrapped up late on a Thursday afternoon, and I was looking forward to a Mississippi hog hunt scheduled for Saturday morning. As I crossed from North Carolina to South Carolina on I-85, I set the cruise control at two miles above the speed limit. The police had stopped cars every three to five miles. I passed a woman standing in front of a police cruiser as the officers searched her vehicle. Then a black man signing a ticket. Then a collateral daMage 141 Hispanic gesticulating as an officer stood listening. Then another Hispanic, spread-eagled on his car as the cops frisked him. Now driving the exact speed limit, I continued down the interstate, seeing the exit to Bob Jones University while a young white man went around me in the passing lane. The back glass of his white sports car sported a sticker: “South Carolina is GOP Country.” I’d have never guessed. Nothing would be gained by delving into South Carolina politics, but it is hard to say enough good things about the state’s forestry and natural resources community. The South Carolina Association of Consulting Foresters has invited the Longleaf Alliance to its meetings and received our message with tremendous enthusiasm. Clemson Extension Service has two forestry specialists (Bob Franklin and Beth Richardson) who have educated hundreds of landowners about Pinus palustris. The South Carolina Forestry Commission sent dozens of its foresters to longleaf academies. The South Carolina Natural Heritage Program has an inspired biologist and preserve manager, Johnny Stowe, who works tirelessly restoring fire, longleaf, and the native herbaceous community to South Carolina’s many Natural Heritage Preserves. The list of agencies working to restore longleaf in South Carolina goes on and on. Over the next fifty years, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of off-site, fire-excluded loblolly and slash plantations should be converted back to longleaf across South Carolina. With the restoration of its native forests and prescribed fire, South Carolina will be better off economically, aesthetically, and ecologically. When I got home, my Mississippi contact, the recently retired Chester Hunt, reported zero hog sign in the WMA we had intended to hunt. Already exhausted from the Virginia trip, I decided to drop Mississippi and catch up on work before the next weekend’s Florida trip. My good friend Mike was accompanying me on the next Florida hunt. I called his cell phone a few days before the scheduled trip and updated him on the coming hunt. “I talked to Jerry, the guy I bought our Florida hunt from, and he is driving to his lease on Thursday. I’m thinking about joining him Thursday evening and hunting all day Friday.” Mike would join me later. “I should be able to get over there Friday afternoon .” We had our plan. It was late Thursday when I finally got away from the Dixon Center. Pass- 142 cHaPter 12 ing through Milton, Florida, I called to touch base with Jerry, the guide, and then Mike. Jerry was at the lease and Mike was already at a hotel in Tallahassee, where I would join him. Mike had appointments in the state capital before he could join me later for the hog hunt. It was 1:30 a.m. by the time I got to Tallahassee, met Mike, and got to bed. The alarm...