Wildlife Habitat Appraisal for the Proposed Allens Creek Reservoir Site
Overall the quality of habitat at Allens Creek is most degraded by agriculture useage. Some high quality bottomland forest acreage left to consider for mitigation requirements.
If a small improvement in habitat quality is to be made for compensation requirements, then a relatively large number of acres should be mitigated. An improvement in habitat quality of 0.10 will require 47,065 acres to be improved. If a large improvement is made, then a small number of acres could be mitigated. An improvement of 0.90 would require 5,229 acres to be improved. A large area of equivalent forest habitat will be needed to mitigate reservoir construction because forests obtained a high percentage of the maximum score. That is, if a maximum 100% management option for habitat improvement is employed, 9,447 acres is the amount obtained from WHAP to replace 2,640 acres of forest lost to the reservoir.
Wetlands delineation on the proposed reservoir site is extremely complex. Wetlands are conservatively estimated to be 1,733 acres.