Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge
Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge is a National Wildlife Refuge established in 1939 and located in central Georgia. It is primarily an upland forest dominated by loblolly pine on the ridges with hardwoods found along the creek bottoms and in scattered upland coves. Clear streams and beaver ponds provide ideal wetland habitat for wood ducks and other wetland dependent species. In the early 19th century the European settlers arrived in abundance and began to clear the land to plant a variety of crops. The settlers removed more than 90% of the forest. The continuous planting of cotton caused serious erosion and soil infertility. By the late 1870s they had abandoned more than a third of the land because the land could not sustain crops. With the combination of soil infertility, the boll weevil outbreak on remaining cotton and the Great Depression, there was wholesale abandonment of the barren eroded land in the 1930s. By then all the top soil had washed away, leaving the red clay subsoil exposed. The refuge was established from this worn out abandoned farm land where few wildlife species remained. With good soil and forest conservation practices, the wildlife habitat began to improve. Today, through the efforts