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'A disaster' but not 'Jurassic Park': The truth about farms and wildlife after Florence

All things considered — crops and property of all kinds — Gov. Henry McMaster estimated the damages at $1.2 billion this week, and he's seeking as much in federal disaster aid.
Credit: Gabe Cavallaro/The Greenville News
A barn is flooded from the aftermath of Hurricane Florence near Crab Tree Swamp off Busbee Street in Conway on Monday, Sept. 17, 2018.

(Greenville News) - While it remains too early to fully gauge the extent of the damage that Hurricane Florence leveled on crops and wildlife, it's clear most animals will be able to adjust more easily than many farmers in the eastern part of the state.

State Agriculture Commissioner Hugh Weathers took an aerial tour of affected farmland this week and estimated the damages to cotton, peanuts and soybeans in South Carolina to be somewhere between the damage from Hurricane Matthew in 2016, about $52 million, and the damage from flooding caused by the drenching extratropical system of 2015, about $330 million.

All things considered — crops and property of all kinds — Gov. Henry McMaster estimated the damages at $1.2 billion this week, and he's seeking as much in federal disaster aid.

Weathers and U.S. Rep. Tom Rice met with farmers in Dillon, Marion and Lake City this week to discuss crop damage.

“We had good engagement with upwards of 60 farmers who verified what we suspected: cotton was most impacted by high wind, followed by peanuts damaged by drenched soil and soybeans whose pods were blown from the plants," Weathers said.

Severe damage to South Carolina cotton crops

Douglas Lynn, who operates Dillon Tractor, said crop damage there has been severe.

"It's a disaster," he said.

While soybeans might survive and most of the area's corn had been harvested, the cotton was nearing harvest.

"The cotton that's open is on the ground or it's just stringing out of the bowl and hanging there," he said.

That's a problem, explained cotton farmer Matt McColl, a Dillon-area resident, because harvesting machines can't pick up stalks that have fallen on the ground.

McColl said some farmers had begun harvesting peanuts, but the fields need to dry out more so farmers can properly dig into the ground to get the rest.

One fear he has is that both peanuts and cotton may have begun sprouting because of the dampness. That would negatively affect quality.

It takes multiple years for farmers to recover

McColl has about 2,600 acres of cotton, 700 acres of soybeans and 600 acres of peanuts.

Weathers said Dillon, Marion and Marlboro counties appear to be most impacted in South Carolina. No crop is a total loss, he said.

“As I said to the farmers at one of the stops, this has become all too familiar," Weathers said "One of the farms we visited today, I’ve actually visited that same farm two of the last three years because of natural disasters.”

Defying the odds, Florence brought enough rainfall to produce the second 1,000-year flood event in South Carolina in three years, according to the National Weather Service. Such events are classified according to probability of occurrence in a given year. The previous 1,000-year event came during the extratropical system floods of 2015.

Florence brought more than 20 inches of rain in parts of South Carolina over four days and more than 30 inches of rain in North Carolina, some of which is draining into South Carolina.

Lynn said it usually takes multiple years for farmers to recover from one bad year. This year marks the third of four years that Pee Dee farmers have seen losses caused by weather, and those losses, Lynn said, affect the entire surrounding communities' economy.

"It is going to be tough," he said.

Deer and bears do fine, wild hogs don't; snakes don't invade

For wildlife, meanwhile, the impacts aren't expected to represent disaster. A wildlife biologist for the state Department of Natural Resources believes the storm and floodwaters likely will not kill many creatures across the Pee Dee river basin but temporarily displace them into new areas.

Biologist Jay Cantrell said most of the wildlife in the area swim, crawl and fly to safety, though some may later succumb to predators or vehicles as they try to survive in temporary new homes where they're less familiar with surroundings.

He also said by this time of year, most young animals, typically born earlier in the year, are at the point where they can move on their own and are not so vulnerable to weather events.

"It doesn't take them long to find their way back once the water recedes," he said. "They'll get back to their normal ranges kind of quickly.

"I'm sure it's a stressful event, but we don't see any large-scale population-level mortality from events like this. There are some isolated mortalities. But most of those things have the ability to escape or withstand it."

One exception, Cantrell said, are feral pigs, also known as wild hogs — a pest for farmers and a damaging environmental influence. Wild hogs in the Pee Dee generally live in river bottoms and swampy areas but cannot swim well and can drown in floods.

"That's not something that really troubles us too much," Cantrell said of the invasive species.

Deer can swim and seem to manage fine.

About 300 black bears live in the region near the coast, Cantrell said, and they, too, seem to survive without trouble.

"They can climb trees. They are highly mobile and can swim," he said. "It shouldn't have any real adverse affect on them, other than like with everything else; some of them may have to temporarily relocate."

As for the perception that floods send large numbers of snakes and alligators into suburban neighborhoods, that's generally not the case, Cantrell said.

"I don't think it's a 'Jurassic Park' of snakes and alligators out there on every piece of high ground," he said.

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