Mixed Swamp Forest
This Set-Aside is one of the original ten SREL habitat reserve areas selected in 1968 to represent a diversity of bottomland hardwood/floodplain forest communities of a southern river swamp system. The majority of this Set-Aside is confined to the floodplain and, for the most part, these communities are relatively undisturbed, older growth mixtures of bottomland hardwood and swamp forests. Represented are aquatic, semi-aquatic, and terrestrial habitats associated with cypress-tupelo ponds, mixed hardwood sloughs, and mixed hardwood ridges. This Set-Aside is important because seasonally flooded hardwood forests are becoming increasingly rare habitats that are particularly vulnerable to habitat destruction and/or alteration due to drainage, water control projects, industrial or urban waste discharge, or power plant cooling effluents.
