The opportunity arose when a farmer voluntarily withdrew from the refuge's cooperative farming program earlier this spring. Recent changes in buffer requirements caused the farmer to rethink the need to farm this most distant part of his operation. The requirements controlled activity around deep ditches that transport water off the site and into the watershed. In addition to new buffer requirements, the farmer's gravel business had begun to overshadow his need for farming. He decided to drop the fields from his operation due to the low price of grain and high travel expenses compared to the relatively profitable gravel sales nearer to home.

Closing up the forest canopy in this area will eliminate much of the existing fragmentation of refuge woodlands and add to the largest contiguous forest habitat in Virginia Beach. Such extensive, contiguous forest habitats are attractive to several uncommon migratory birds and the refuge bobcat population.

This management change neatly fits the refuge's comprehensive conservation plan by vacating most farming actions on the refuge, a change that is in keeping with the Service's biological integrity policy. Further, it restores farmland to native forest and shrub habitats that once were common in this area.

The refuge will partner with the Fish and Wildlife Service's Gloucester, Va., Ecological Services Field Office to plug drainage ditches and plant hundreds of black gum, water gum, tupelo, bald cypress, green ash, and oak seedlings that represent the original forest community of the area.