Chapter 3 North Carolina’s Species
prescribed fire planning in these areas, further limiting the opportunities to conduct effective burns for habitat management.
Invasive species control is needed in nearly every disturbed site. The various forms of habitat degradation mentioned before each cause inroads for invasive species to colonize, especially in areas where the natural community matrix has been disturbed. Managing invasive species should be equal parts avoidance, control, and eradication of existing infestations. Hydrological alterations are also very common forms of habitat degradation but may be the most challenging and least straight-forward threats to address, especially alterations related to climate change such as seal level rise and saltwater intrusion. Understanding the hydrological needs of a species or community is critical to managing such conditions. In areas with alterations, consider options that restore historic stream flow and capacity for maintaining surface and groundwater levels. • Right-of-way maintenance is unique compared to natural areas and brings with it a specialized set of management considerations. For one, these areas can simultaneously be highly altered and provide important habitat, especially for sun-loving plant species easily out-competed by surrounding vegetation. Appropriately timed mowing regimes can be highly effective at managing a wide variety of plant habitats in rights-of-way. However, increasingly, rights-of-way are being maintained with herbicide instead of mowing for generalized maintenance focused on human uses (e.g., maintaining visibility in road shoulders and avoiding hazards in powerlines). 3.13.6 Threats and Problems The threat assessment tool used to develop the plant SGCN list helps to assess the conservation needs of an individual species and identifies the greatest threats across all the reviewed species. The PCP has identified the following as the top threats to rare plants in North Carolina: natural system modifications (i.e., incompatible land management and hydrological alterations), residential and commercial development (i.e., habitat loss), invasive and other problematic species and genes, and stochasticity. Apart from stochasticity, these threats are defined in Salafsky et al. (2008) . The most important threats relate to habitat loss and habitat degradation. This is not surprising considering the stationary nature of plants, especially relative to most other taxonomic groups. Not surprisingly, these threats are particularly impactful in North Carolina given the state’s long history with agriculture and other land-use intensive industries, as well as its recent and ongoing rapid development and growth. By fragmenting landscapes and damaging natural communities and natural processes, natural areas that are not directly disturbed can face secondary or indirect impacts from nearby habitat losses. Further, habitat fragmentation can disrupt or diminish the connectivity between remaining habitats which can cause populations to be isolated, leading to genetic diversity losses.
2025 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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