I’ll bet you didn’t think you can have fun with barbed wire,
did you? Ah, but we did. Of course our warped sense of fun might be
different than yours. Our crack team of
Virginia Master Naturalists (Kathy, Charlotte, Rick, Warren, Glen, Paul, Geoff
and me (Rich)) met at Bald Knob Natural Area Preserve (NAP) in Rocky Mount on a
brisk but sunny January morning. We met
Ryan Klopf, Mountain Region Steward, Department of Conservation &
Recreation, Division of Natural Heritage and his two henchmen, Wes and Colin. Our purpose was to clean up an old fence row
of barbed wire and other wire fencing that could cause harm to the wildlife
living on the NAP.
But first, a little background about Bald Knob NAP. It is the newest NAP in Virginia. The site is called a Piedmont mafic barren where
exposed rocks resist weathering and have unusual chemical properties, making
them and their derived soils different from typical Piedmont sites. Due to the soil make-up, the NAP is home to
the very rare Piedmont fameflower (Phemeranthus
piedmontanus) has only been documented at a handful of sites in the
world. Ryan explained that the mafic
rock in Rocky Mount was originally formed due to volcanic activity. The original lava was then compressed into a
very hard rock that erodes very slowly.
The rock is estimated to be about a billion years old and was formed
when the Atlantic Ocean was forming for the first time.
After our arrival we were given wire cutting tools and 5
gallon buckets and a lecture to be careful with the barbed wire. Then we headed uphill, snipped and folded
barbed wire into the buckets, carried it downhill and deposited the barbed wire in large containers
and then repeated several times. What
originally felt like a brisk morning turned to sweat and sore muscles. And no one cut themselves on the barbed wire! For a bunch of old codgers, we dun good.
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| Bald Knob NAP |
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| The gang is all here |
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| Mafic Rock |
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| Barbed wire grown through middle of tree |
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| The fruits of our labor |
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| Piedmont fameflower |
Thanks for describing the effort, Rich, but it sounds much more simple than I recall it. The heavy duty multiple strand fence must have been designed to keep in bison and must have been put in by those kin to mountain goats. Now the area looks much more like a nature preserve than a barnyard. Great work everyone!
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