PPIC: THE MOST WATCHED-OVER FOREST IN THE SOUTH
Soon after 0700 on January 12, the landowner of a 79-acre PPIC near Cochran, Georgia called our Macon office to report that some goats were grazing in the field that we had planted about two weeks earlier and that they were damaging the seedlings. In less than two hours, our forester was on the ground with a digital camera and a GPS unit.
In the plantation he found four white nanny goats that had been released by or escaped from the fence of a neighbor, who also kept a billy goat tied up in his yard. The neighbor removed his goats and promised to keep them out of the plantation. Using the GPS unit, our forester mapped the portion in which most of the seedlings had been nipped off by the goats and determined its area to be 0.7 acre. With the camera, he took close-up photos of several damaged seedlings to show what the goats had done. By noon his report including the photos was being studied by Jim Vardaman at our headquarters in Jackson, Mississippi.
The photos showed that the goats had bitten off the tips of seedlings, apparently not more than 20 percent of the portion above ground, and that there were plenty of green needles still on the plants. At quite a few times in the past, we've had such damage caused by deer, which are abundant almost everywhere, and all such seedlings have resumed growth by putting out new needles and shoots. Biting off the tip is not a recommended forestry practice, but it shouldn't cause much mortality. We decided to do nothing more for the time being, especially since less than one percent of the PPIC was affected.
The PPIC landowner lives on another portion of the tract about 1,000 feet from the goat owner and the damaged area; he knows our forester well and has a telephone. In these respects, he is like more than 95% of all PPIC landowners. We don't know whether he called us because of his buy-back option (see nearby article) or the innate human tendency to help protect property, but we are very thankful.
He and other landowners are why PPICs are the most watched-over forests in the South.
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