Trip to Lower Cane

The southern most unit of this refuge is about two hours south of here.  It is called the Lower Cane unit and today I went down there with an intern here to break up some beaver dams.  They like to dam up part of the wetlands to make the water deeper which is not good for the trees. We loaded the Ranger (like a 6 wheel Gator) on a trailer and hauled it down there.  On the road in, we saw and impressive display of pelicans.  This picture is only a small part of them.

We drove on a road on top of a dike to get into the area.

After we got into the area, we unloaded the Ranger and drove down trails like these.

There are a lot of wild hogs down here, can you see the hog wallow near the bottom of this picture?

Here is a close up shot of it.  They like to root up holes like this to lay in.

This is our trusty Ranger that got us in and out again.

The first dam that we took out was just a small one.

The next one was built in the end of a culvert under the four wheeler road and was under water so I didn't get a picture of it.   The last one was a long one made mostly of mud and grass.  They will probably have them rebuilt by next week.  This is one of the common trees down here, they call it a mock orange and the thorns that you can see are sharp!

We made it back safely and after supper Janice and I took a moonlit drive in the Ranger to lock the boat ramp gates.  Happy Valentine's day!