CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

Restoring Alabama Glade Habitats with Kyle Lybarger

Added 2025-04-29 15:39:25 +0000 UTC

The thin-soiled limestone glade habitats of Northeastern Alabama are home to some of the coolest and rarest plants in the Southeast, but two centuries of fire suppression has put the continued existence of many of them in danger. In this episode we meet up with Kyle Lybarger of @NativeHabitatProject to talk about his work bringing fire back to restore some of them. The Southeastern United States receives anywhere from 50 to 70 inches of rain a year. Being in such a high rainfall environment for me is disorienting, as I spend most of my time in deserts, so it becomes readily apparent how fast a landscape can quickly be covered with plants in a region where humidity and rainfall allow for such a fast growth rate. Because of this, fire is an essential tool for reducing competition among plants and preventing prairies and grasslands from being overtaken by woodies. These are landscapes that historically would have been managed by both Indigenous Americans and megafauna such as bison, but two centuries of fire suppression by a culture that didn't know how to manage the landscape properly has led to the near-extirpation of many of the plant species, prairie and grassland habitats, and an explosion in the tick population (to learn how fire suppresses tick populations, check out the "Learn Your Land" youtube episode on fire and ticks). Plant species mentioned in this episode include : Leavenworthia crassa Silphium mohrii Silphium brachiatum Dalea foliosa Mononeuria patula Frasera carolinensis Dodecatheon meadia Pediomelum subacaule Matelea carolinensis Delphinium alabamicum