Forest Management for Wildlife Workshop

Announcer: Farm and Family is a production of the Mississippi State University Extension Service.

Amy Myers: Today we're talking about the Forest Management for Wildlife Workshop. Hello, I'm Amy Myers, and welcome to Farm and Family. Today we're speaking with Dr. Brady Self, Mississippi State University associate extension professor.

Brady, what is the Forest Management for Wildlife Workshop exactly?

Brady Self: Sure. This is a workshop we put together that's kind of an adaptation of the workshops we were doing last year, which were game camera survey workshops, and the fact that things have changed with chronic wasting disease, we had to kind of manipulate what we do with these. What we've done is go back to the drawing board, and we still do some of the forest management for our habitat type work with this particular workshop, but we've also included a pretty substantial segment on chronic wasting disease. Again, this is going to be an indoors workshop for the informational type data, and then we go outdoors, and we talk about actual forest management on the ground, and how we incorporate that into managing for not only our timber, but our wildlife species as well.

Amy Myers: Do you have partners for this workshop?

Brady Self: We do. We always try to tie in with some type of land owner locally. In this particular case, we've gone kind of out in a little bit of a different direction. We work with the Audubon Society on this particular workshop, primarily the people up at Strawberry Plains at the Audubon Center there in Marshall County. We also always tie in with the local extension service office in each individual county. In this case, like I said, Marshall County. And then, I also work pretty heavily with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks under the guise of their private lands biologist. They have a couple of those guys actually helping out with these.

Amy Myers: Who stands to benefit by attending this Forest Management for Wildlife Workshop?

Brady Self: As I said, primarily what we're looking at doing here is trying to work with land owners, and primarily again, those being the land owners that are really interested in managing their forests while trying to increase habitat for different wildlife species. Additionally, like I said, before we're tying this back and giving some informational chronic wasting disease, because Marshall County is inside the quarantine zones set up by MDWF&P, so in this particular case, we're going to go a lot more heavily into the realm of what the new rules and the regulations are going to do, and how that impacts what we do from a forestry and wildlife management standpoint.

Amy Myers: What will folks learn here at the Forest Management for Wildlife Workshop?

Brady Self: Again, chronic wasting disease and the management implications that come out of that, but additionally, going back to the forestry side of the coin here, we're going to teach them kind of the most current silviculture methodology that we have, that we know of right now for managing pines and hardwoods in an attempt to give us both those timber benefits from an economic and aesthetic standpoint, and increasing basically the caring capacity for different wildlife species.

Amy Myers: Okay, sounds good. Is there anything else you want to add about this workshop?

Brady Self: Sure. Like I said, it's an indoor/outdoor workshop. So indoors, middle of August, we know what it's going to be like once we get outdoors. Indoors is just a standard watching presentations and the Q & A back and forth. Once we get outside, it is going to be hot, so if you have some heat aversion, you may want to think about that, and also things like boots, insect repellents, anything that's common sense for being outside in the middle of August in Mississippi.

Amy Myers: When and where will the Forest Management for Wildlife Workshop be held, and where can we go for more information?

Brady Self: Sure. This particular workshop's going to be Friday, August the 16th there in Marshall County. We will start off the day at about... Well, registration starts at 8:30, but we'll start off the course at about 9:00, go to lunch there inside the Marshall County Extension Office, and then travel to the field for the outdoors portion right after we get finished with eating. That'll go to somewhere around 2:00 at the Audubon Center there.

For information, you can always go to the local office. In this case, again the Marshall County Extension Office, or you can go online to the MSU Extension website. Look under the calendar function, and pull up any information, a flyer or registration info, all that kind of stuff for this particular course. That's at extension.msstate.edu if you're interested.

Amy Myers: Okay. So that's Friday, August 16th at the Marshall County Extension Office.

Today we've been speaking with Dr. Brady Self, Mississippi State University extension associate professor. I'm Amy Myers, and this has been Farm and Family. Have a great day.

Announcer: Farm and Family is a production of the Mississippi State University Extension Service.