Now this is just a theory of mine on a particular area……I don’t know for sure if its gonna hold true or not but I got a hunch……The “plantation belt” down here is a very large area…. a lotta lotta of land……..especially if we go from Russell Co all the way across south Montgomery and westward……There’s also a LOTTTT of dormant season fire being run through these plantations with zero herbivory…..I say this as someone who has tromped through a lot of it…..

I think we’re probably producing too much grass on a large scale across this area. You’re talking about a huge area over producing grass…..which is likely carrying high rodent populations as a result……which is probably driving huge predator loads…..which probably impacts areas well outside of just that plantation zone…..Imagine the coon scenario we just got through talking about with them being grouped up on the feeders all winters and then dispersed on Feb 11……..Now apply that same concept to raptors and let the over grassed plantation belt be our feeder. Same concept on way bigger scale. This huge imbalance of grass could be propping up raptor populations that are impacting the landscape at county wide levels and farther……I know I’m in Auburn and its crazy at the amount I see here flying around town. I counted 5 in the sky one day that I could see from the back yard.

But lets just say we’re averaging 60% grass across many of these plantations and we should be at 30%.......Like the picture I posted there are some stands that are dang near 100% grass…..But just at 60% that’s twice as much grass as we should have……Does that equate to twice the rodents?.....I don’t know the answer for sure but I think it’d probably be a safe bet to assume it increases their abundance by a good bit…..that’s twice the cover and twice the food…….If we made a structural adjustment to the understory and got all of that grass in check……How would that effect the predator populations??.......You couple this overabundance of plantation belt grass with the fact that there’s cattle farming heavily intertwined in amongst it growing hay and such and its all a big recipe for predator paradise on BIG scale......and a lot of it is due to the "structural layout" being heavily in their favor.