Sewanee - The University of the South
OP-T2-20: Wildlife Habitat

With 13,000 acres, Sewanee is gratefully endowed with significant wildlife habitat. As such, we are also called towards stewardship of the wildlife which call the Domain home. The 2011 Domain Management Plan includes the specific goals of “managing habitats to enhance, protect, and promote biodiversity across the landscape” as well as “fostering ecological community that can be resilient to climate change.” The Main threats to biodiversity in Sewanee are habitat loss (e.g., conversion of native vegetation to other land covers), habitat fragmentation (e.g., by roads in natural areas), habitat degradation (e.g., loss of structural and functional diversity), non-native species (that may outcompete, prey on, or infect natives), pollution (e.g., by dumps, movement of sediment into waterways, etc), and over-harvesting (e.g., removal of top mammalian predators, over-digging of ginseng, etc). Thus, Sewanee is active in protecting sensitive areas that harbor particularly unique and sensitive biodiversity include Vernal pools, Streams, Upland sandstone outcrops, Limestone outcrops in coves, Caves, Old growth forests, Bluff edges. The Office of Domain Management uses quantifiable metrics such as Number of exotic species naturalized on the Domain, Percent cover of exotic species, Degree of fragmentation of habitat, Amount of sediment/other particulates entering streams, Number and types of roads through natural areas, Structure and composition of forests, and the Status of threatened, endangered, range-restricted, or endemic species to assess our biodiversity and wildlife protection program.