June 8, 2023 – The Hominy Branch Trail at Princess Place Preserve will close beginning Monday, June 12, for 30 days for habitat restoration of about 70 acres. The work will not affect the remainder of the park, which visitors are welcome to come and enjoy.
The upland pine restoration project will be completed under a grant and in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The land management activities will include mechanical mulching to create safer conditions for prescribed fire and to allow a more open understory that is accessible by ground-dwelling native species, like the gopher tortoise, for habitat and forage.
“The natural community affected is a scrubby flatwood and sandhill mosaic that has been impacted by exclusion of natural fire across the landscape,” said Public Lands and Natural Resource Manager Michael Lagasse. “Without periodic natural fire, vegetation has grown up without the natural fire cycle and that negatively affects native plant and animal diversity.”
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