4.4 Terrestrial Communities
resources. Particular needs include preserving biodiversity, protecting native populations and their habitats, and improving degraded habitats.
• Where possible, allow fre to burn through transition zones to maintain these sites instead of plowing fre lines through them.
• Suppress Fire Ant colonies—particularly where multi-queen colonies have developed— in all protected natural areas. • Restore landscape integrity to protect insect populations associated with Longleaf Pine habitats. • Evaluate sustainable forestry criteria established by European countries that use woody biomass for fuel to generate preliminary guidelines for biomass production in North Carolina (Buford and Neary 2010 in DeWan et al. 2010) . • Develop strategies for pine straw raking that minimizes impacts to understory habitat structure. Conservation Programs and Partnerships. Conservation programs, incentives, and part- nerships should be utilized to the fullest extent in order to preserve high-quality resources and protect important natural communities. Protective measures that utilize existing regu- latory frameworks to protect habitats and species should be incorporated where applicable. Land conservation or preservation can serve numerous purposes in the face of anticipated climate change, but above all, it promotes ecosystem resilience.
• Work cooperatively with other agencies to defne sustainable forestry criteria for bio- mass production.
• Provide landowners with the option to purchase longleaf seedlings that stay in the grass stage longer. Tis will allow the trees to better establish their root systems in the hurricane zone, and will also provide a longer period of high-quality early successional habitat. • Give high priority to protecting and expanding the few remaining examples regardless of climate change. Because these systems are likely to withstand the stresses of chang- ing climate well, restoring more of them in the near future would produce more resil- ient natural landscapes.
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2015 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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