Meeting+2008+July+17

Thursday 2008 Jul 17 8:30-10 1214 Jordan Hall, NCSU Campus
 * Wake County Nature Preserves Meeting**


 * Attendance Notes**

Attending: Alexander, Cheshire, Connors, Gavazzi, Lisk, C. Smith, Treasure


 * Annotated Agenda Items**

//Please add items you'd like to see on the agenda by Tue 15 Jul 5PM//

//Please add your pre-meeting discussion of these items under the item right here on the agenda, or on the appropriate linked page.//


 * Introductions (old, new, and long-absent members)** (5 minutes)

Emrys Treasure and Michael Gavazzi from the USDA Forest Service office on Centennial Campus attended to explore ways in which they might be able to work with the partnership. They will take information back to their office to explore with colleagues how the Forest Service office might work with us.

- No action has been taken. Management Plan discussion meeting is Wed July 23, 9-11am at Morning Times in Raleigh. - Snow comments
 * Management Plans** (Ramsey, Sinclair, 10 min)

Noone was present to speak about this.
 * NOTES**

- Report on possible approaches - Select an approach and move forward - set dates, etc
 * Municipal Contacts** (Snow, Reis, Alexander, 30 min)

- A question was raised about the scope of this outreach - should it include state parks, Progress Energy, etc. We decided to focus on municipalities only at this point, because these other organizations already have management plans. This decision can be revisited in future. - What we'd like to do is present what we're doing at Marks Creek as an example and walk the parks directors through the process. A management plan outline partly filled in with items from Marks Creek would be a good thing to present. - Decision was to work toward a meeting on the morning of Thurs 2 Oct (our regular meeting time) at Yates Mill Park.
 * NOTES**

- Hess will contact Yates Mill to reserve room - We need to appoint a team to lead this effort at the next meeting
 * Action**


 * Marks Creek Inventory Update** (from Connors, 5 min)

Please find attached inventory results from my Breeding Bird Surveys and corresponding Herp Surveys for the Mark's Creek Project. There are others that are doing some Herp work as well but there observations are not included. Ten Cover Boards have been surveyed for herps during each visit since we installed them in early May. Additional Cover Boards have not yet been installed but will be this month, so the herp work will be ongoing.

The Breeding Bird Survey is considered complete, although one sector of the site was never surveyed. The data for songbirds was collected for the number of territorial males found singing, not for individual birds seen. Thus, records of 1 Louisiana Waterthrush means there was one bird, or family of birds, observed during the survey. Also, I only visited the site for one night visit, but found both Chuck-wills-Widow and Whip-poor-Will calling from the site.

A Butterfly list is in the offing.

- Breeding birds
 * NOTES**
 * Have found species included in the Wildlife Action Plan, which makes this site an Outstanding Natural Area
 * No grassland birds found, but there is an old farm field that could be managed for grassland birds if that were an objective for the site
 * Many wetland bird species

- Plants & trees
 * Presence of [|Michaux's sumac], an endangered plant, qualifies site as an  Exceptional Natural Area, our highest classification
 * There are about 20-30 acres of loblolly pine on what appears to be sandy soil. This could be a site for longleaf pine restoration, paid for by harvesting the loblolly.  This would be a great, long-term class project.  Might also be a focus of a Forest Management (Forestry 405) course project.

- Herps
 * Cover boards working well
 * Herp club is still surveying
 * Inventory will continue through winter

- General
 * Our 1-year inventory cycle will be completed in Feb 2009
 * Need to start considering which site(s) we'll inventory next and how we will accomplish that
 * NE quadrant has not been inventories, because there is no trail access. Believed to be a pine wood
 * Connors brought up the desire to map the 20-30 boulders and rock outcroppings and provide management advice for each. Suggested that we might have a 1-day outing on a Saturday to involve students from environment-related courses across campus to do this.  In response to a question about availability of GPS units, Cheshire noted that recreational grade GPS is likely good enough.  Connors noted that other items might also be mapped, including switch cane, farm fields.  Soil cores might be useful to identify potential longleaf restoration sites, if that's a potential County goal.  The dates of 8, 15 Nov were suggested (we want leaves down) and (I'm not making this up) we checked the [|football schedule]  to see how likely conflict was (at Duke on the 8th, Wake Forest here on 15th, times not set).  Might also consider Friday, as many classes don't meet Friday.  Need to explore this more at next meeting.


 * Other business**

- Cheshire has GIS data locating Exceptional Natural Areas in parks. It will be on the wiki shortly - check back here for link.
 * NOTES**


 * Inventory Database Update** (from Bockhahn, who will not attend)

14 July: We met with Jakeema Dawkins from Wake County Information Services on Monday. She is our project manager, and we'll be working with her on the specifics of the software, etc. and on getting the project approved by the two committees that need to approve it. Our next step will be scheduling a meeting/presentation with Tom Howard, and we will let WNPP know when we choose a date, since all interested parties will be invited to the presentation.