County hopes to tap into grant funds for recreation, habitat upgrades
Taylor County is looking to hoping to tap into grant funds to help make recreational and wildlife habitat improvements in the county forest.
Members of the Forestry committee on Friday approved giving county forest administrator Luke Williams permission to move move ahead with applying for a Wild Turkey Stamp Grant to pay for the clearing of additional wildlife habitat areas in the forest. Williams said the plan is to hire out a contractor to use a bulldozer and clear 13 acres of openings of various sizes. Department staff will then seed the openings with a mixture of clover and oats to encourage wildlife to the areas. While it would be beneficial for turkey, Williams said it would also be beneficial for deer to create areas for them to browse. “It is more of a deer thing,” Williams said.
The total project is $33,824 with the county seeking $15,000 from the turkey stamp grant program. It was reported that the Taylor County Sportsman’s Club has pledged $5,000 to the project.
Williams said that if they did not get the grant, they would scale back their plans and do a much smaller project.
Williams also came to the committee for approval to add .61 miles to the ATV trails in the county forest. While having longterm benefit with additional trails for riders to access, Willams said there would be an advantage to moving forward with the project to improve access to a 97-acre parcel that is coming up for cutting in the next few years as well as another 54 acres that is scheduled to be harvested again in the mid 2030s. The route will connect from Wilderness to Loop Road.
By having it as ATV trails, the county will be able to tap into money for ATV trail development as well as increase the amount of aid-able miles of trails in the county. Williams noted that if the winter continues to be low usage for snowmobile maintenance, there is the potential to do the work out of those funds entirely. Williams estimated the project will be about $25,000 with the cost in improving drainage and in the purchase of breaker run. Committee members approved having Willams continue with the ATV trail expansion.
In other business, committee members: • Approved, with Rollie Thums abstaining, contracting with the county highway department to do $25,000 worth of access road graveling in the county forest. Williams noted by hiring the county highway crew to do the work, it keeps the money spent within the county budgets and will result in less administration work for his department as well as eliminating bidding costs. “It would be good to develop a relationship with the highway department,” Williams said, noting a benefit of the plan. He said they would still utilize local private contractors for things like maintenance of the ATV trails. Williams noted that the county could try it for this year and see how it works out and could always switch to private companies in the future.
• Received a report on logging in the forest. The cold temperatures and lack of heavy snow has been a benefit for loggers, allowing them to access winter harvest areas that require frozen ground conditions. Staff noted there haven’t been any issues reported with the contractors and that there are some sales nearing completion.
