by Ben Larson, RGS & AWS Forest Conservation Director – Mid-Atlantic
In western Maryland, the Backbone Mountain Chapter and RGS & AWS staff have been working for over a decade to improve forest habitats through collaboration with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) at Jennings Randolph Lake (JRL), a flood-control reservoir that straddles the West Virginia and Maryland border, and with private landowners nearby.
John Denning, habitat chair of the chapter, explained how that the partnership evolved out of the generous time that JRL staff invested in the Handicapped Hunter program. “We figured they might be active and willing partners that RGS could team up with and support in their efforts to improve upon important wildlife habitat on the management area, that’s certainly been the case.”
The collaboration between RGS & AWS with JRL integrates our legacy project-by-project approach and our new focus on dynamic forest restoration blocks – landscape-scale, multi-year projects. It also underscores how our approach to diversifying and improving forest habitats needs to reflect local conditions.
In 2013, RGS & AWS and JRL signed a memorandum of understanding to collaboratively implement JRL’s natural resource management goals. In 2021, to facilitate collaborations at other USACE facilities, RGS & AWS and USACE signed a national Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
Fran Montgomery, lead ranger at Jennings Randolph Lake, said, “As one of JRL’s longest standing partnerships, RGS has been invaluable to the success of managing natural resources at JRL. As stewards of federal lands, it’s our duty to protect and enhance the natural resources of the park. JRL relies heavily on partnerships to accomplish these goals as we have a small staff with only two natural resource specialists. RGS has provided funding, volunteers and technical expertise to ensure that our forest management program can continue, to benefit wildlife and the visiting public who come here to enjoy the outdoors.”
Between 2013 and 2019, RGS & AWS helped plan and implement more than 100 acres of forest management on the West Virginia and Maryland sides of the reservoir as well as helped fund weed control, fertilizing and tree plantings.
JRL is currently updating their resource management plan, which is expected to include additional forest management and habitat projects. As part of our MOU with JRL, RGS & AWS and other partners will help JRL implement their updated resource plan with active forest management.
RGS & AWS has also been working with other partners and neighboring private landowners – many of whom own lands that’ve been surface mined for coal – to get mined lands reforested and young forest habitat established.
Across the Appalachians, over a million acres of forest has been converted by coal mining to a grassland or a scrub/shrub cover type, dominated by non-native invasive species.
To successfully reforest mined lands, the Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA) was developed by the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI). The FRA promotes reducing compaction and deep ripping with bulldozers to improve root penetration, water infiltration and colonization. Native trees and shrubs are then planted to restore forests. Given the heavy equipment involved, plant materials and labor, mineland reforestation isn’t cheap.
But, as Scott Eggerud, a forester with ARRI and the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), explains, “Restoring native cover types, using the FRA, maximizes ecological services including creating early successional habitat and carbon sequestration.”
In 2015, RGS & AWS, the U.S. Forest Service, the Maryland Forest Service and OSMRE planned and planted a 24-acre mineland reforestation project adjoining JRL. In 2024, working with Bosland Growth and the Maryland and Washington, D.C. chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), we’ve had constructive conversations with a landowner whose lands adjoin JRL and who has former minelands on their property. While not finalized, this first prospective project reinforces our strategy of collaborating with groups focusing on mineland reforestation and nearby private landowners to complement and expand dynamic blocks.
In addition, we are excited to start working more with the Maryland Forest Service, the University of Maryland Extension, TNC, Audubon Mid-Atlantic and other partners to formally plan our dynamic block at JRL and conduct outreach to nearby private forest landowners who are interested in managing their forests. In 2024, the Maryland Forest Service is expecting $500,000 in funding from the U.S. Forest Service to plan three dynamic forest restoration blocks across Maryland, including JRL, and conduct outreach to private landowners. The work RGS & AWS has completed with JRL staff, other partners and private landowners in western Maryland is another example of how collaboration and innovation go hand in hand to help improve forest management and increase habitat diversity and quality.
Map of prior mineland reforestation project and potential stands to manage for improved habitat at Jennings Randolph Lake. Map and aerial imagery courtesy of JRL, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Map of Jennings Randolph Lake in western Maryland courtesy of JRL, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Learn more about habitat projects in the Mid-Atlantic Region.
