Jennings expanding prairie ecosystem
BRADY TWP — Snakes need a place to call home.
“We owe it to that species to protect that habitat,” said Wil Taylor, manager of Jennings Environmental Education Center, talking about the eastern massasauga rattlesnake. “It's a valuable animal.”
Taylor, who has been with the center since 2011, said Jennings plans to double the size of its prairie ecosystem in the next three years as part of its habitat expansion project to aid the eastern massasauga rattlesnake, a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
“It's an extremely rare species,” Taylor said, adding the massasauga is found only in three locations in Pennsylvania. “The next logical step is not just to manage that, but create additional habitat so that the population might increase.”
This winter, trees in the 6-acre area between Deer Trail and Route 273 to the north of the 15-acre existing prairie were cut — the first phase of the project. The state park is located at 2951 Prospect Road.
“It's a very young, scraggly, immature forest that really wasn't very productive at all,” Taylor said about the cleared area. “We saw an opportunity to really do some great resource management work and not just tread water and manage what we have, but create something new and special by expanding the habitat.”
About 10 years ago, every ash tree in Butler County was inflicted with emerald ash borer, an invasive insect, and killed, Taylor said.
“Disturbance is generally good,” he said. “Things don't want to stay the same.”
When prairie plants began to return, Taylor looked at the disturbance as positive, which led the center to create more disturbance as it planned to expand the area.
Prescribed burning and mechanical cutting are methods to actively manage the area.
Cutting trees takes place in the winter when the massasaugas are in hibernation and when the ground is harder so there is no interruption in the soil.
The cut area will be monitored over the summer for snake activity and invasive plants, he said.
Taylor said he hopes they can use fire in the area this fall. However, that is weather dependent.“The idea behind the fire is it knocks back saplings and things trying to grow up and it encourages herbaceous plants to grow,” he said.Currently, the 15-acre prairie has about 100 massasaugas, Taylor said. The open area is not only for the snakes, but a variety of other insects, birds, amphibians and reptiles.The massasauga is venomous and eats small mammals, including deer mice and shrews, which can have an impact on disease, he said. It also acts as a form of tick control.“I can't really stress enough how valuable this open early successional young forest type of habitat is for a variety of our species,” Taylor stressed.Other animals the area will help is the Baltimore checkerspot, songbird species, and the box turtle, which could all take to the site, Taylor said.Volunteers conduct visual surveys once a week and process the massasaugas, he said. This includes weighing, measuring and inserting a Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tag, which is similar to a bar code.Doing this process over a long period of time can help the center figure out how many snakes it has, Taylor said.The snakes are competing for open areas, places to bask, heavy grassier areas to feed and crayfish holes to hibernate, he said. The reason to extend the area as far as the center did was to connect it to a potential place the snakes could hibernate.Doubling the habitat will give the snake more room and increase its chances of survival, Taylor said.Additionally, the new area will resemble the way Jennings looked in the late '50s and early '60s when it first became a nature preserve, Taylor said.This summer, center workers will check out the area and salvage wood for building purposes or firewood. The second phase of the project will take place next winter when the interior of Deer Trail will be cut, Taylor said. .The following year, there will be selective thinning, he said.About a year or two after the work is complete, the area will be studied again to determine the effect of the project, Taylor said. The parks trails are open.“We will no longer be like a little island,” Taylor said. “We will be a larger piece on the landscape that could potentially connect to other landscapes at Moraine State Park. It's an exciting project.”
