Davey Tree Flipbooks

15 November/December 2021 | THE DAVEY BULLETIN Above left: Representatives from DRG and BGE unveiled signage marking certification of a BGE ROW as a certified pollinator habitat in Mt. Vista Park in Maryland this fall. Above right: A brilliant sunrise shines on flowers blooming on an Oklahoma Gas & Electric (OG&E) right of way, where pollinator habitat cultivation is a priority. DRG has facilitated planting of 23 acres of pollinator plots in ROWs for client OG&E. DRG will be coordinating with vendors to help plant 30 additional acres of pollinator habitat flora for OG&E in 2022. changing your vegetation management methods doesn't mean a utility's vegetation management program will suffer. You can implement these kinds of habitat conservation methods and still be proactive in staying compliant with regulations on transmission ROW management." Four DRG employees work with BGE to monitor sections of ROW on four sites in Maryland: • Mount Vista Park, a 111-acre former golf course owned by Baltimore County where BGE manages 10 acres for the Wildlife Habitat Council status in a 230kv right-of-way • South River Greenway, a 16,000-acre area designated as a conservation priority by the Scenic Rivers Land Trust where 200 acres of ROW are being managed with integrated vegetation management best management practices • Patuxent Research Refuge, a 12,800-acre wildlife habitat managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service where another 200 acres of right-of-way are intensively managed • Dasher Court, a 25-acre section of ROW in Columbia, Maryland, intersecting a high-traffic, multi-purpose trail that meanders along a wetland and Lake Elkhorn; this ROW includes educational signs explaining the value of BGE's integrated vegetation management program Eikenbary said DRG performs similar habitat monitoring services for PECO Energy Company in Pennsylvania, Potomac Electric Power Company in Washington, D.C., and Atlantic City Electric Company in New Jersey. All these clients are subsidiaries of Exelon Corporation, a leading U.S. energy provider and distributor. "This method of study and research that we're able to perform is easily replicated," Eikenbary said. "We've developed this process where we are able to work in tandem with DRG employees already on site for a client performing other vegetation management services. We can conduct our monitoring services and send the data back to the Davey Institute to complete the analysis." HABITAT STUDY AND ANALYSIS Experts at the Institute assisted both DRG operations with monitoring and analysis of the pollinator habitats for OG&E and BGE. Currently, baseline data is being gathered for the first year of analysis on these sites. Adam Baker, technical advisor, said DRG uses survey meth- ods designed by himself and Dan Herms, vice president of research and development, at the Institute to gather data tracking ecology and ROW management changes over time. "These monitoring methods can be applied quickly and effectively to give us a clear picture of how the habitats are changing over time and review keystone species, whether the host plants for pollinators or invasive plants, and we're also looking at some of the more high-impact fauna such as bees and butterflies," Baker said. "We're focusing on keystone species as a metric for environmental health." The data gathering protocols align with several certification programs with goals similar to the WHC, such as the ROW as Pollinator Habitat Scorecard, the Monarch Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA), and the Integrated Monarch Monitoring Program (IMMP). "The methodology we are using is well established and defensible, leads to compliance with all these different programs, and will provide insight on how these ecosystems change over time," he said. "We're looking at butterfly populations, pollinator populations such as bees, flies, and beetles, botanical communities, and habitat cover type in the ROWs."

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