Getting Outside in Valdosta, Georgia can be lots of F-U-N, especially if you know the right places to go. Grand Bay Wildlife Management Area is a hidden gem in the Valdosta Area that not many people know about.
Grand Bay WMA is located in the lower Coastal Plain physiographic province in what is typically known as "flatwoods." It is situated within a 13,000-acre wetlands system, which is the second largest natural blackwater wetland in the Coastal Plain of Georgia. There are education facilities, a boardwalk to an observation tower, and canoe rentals.
Grand Bay Wetland Education Center, teaches and demonstrates the complex ecological relationships between plants and animals. Its educational activities, including guided trips into the Grand Bay Wetland; working with live mammals and amphibians and reptiles; and interactive ecological experiments, correlate with the state of Georgia's curriculum standards. The center also offers to the public an interpretative experience of the Grand Bay Wildlife Management Area, which includes the 18,000-acre Grand Bay/Banks Lake ecosystem. The size of the Grand Bay ecosystem is second in Georgia only to the Okefenokee Swamp, the largest wetland in the state and one of the largest in the Southeast. Like the Okefenokee, Grand Bay offers many plant communities, including upland longleaf and slash pine flatwoods, cypress and gum swamps, savannahs, and various shrub bogs.
Grand Bay is a designated site on the Southern Rivers Birding Trail, which spans the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions of Georgia and terminates in the state's wetlands. There are thirty sites for observing birds along the entire birding trail. Within Grand Bay, visitors may observe egrets, hawks, herons, owls, song birds, white ibis, woodpeckers, and wood storks. Anhingas are also common on the marsh. Common moorhens and purple gallinules nest here also. Rarely seen but present are American bitterns, black-crowned and yellow-crowned night herons A small population of Florida sandhill cranes has been introduced to the area, and individuals can be seen or heard throughout the year. Migratory greater sandhill cranes usually arrive on the marsh in mid-November and remain until mid-January. Several hundred cranes typically feed on the floating mat community in Grand Bay during winter.
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Alligators, deer, otters, and various species of frogs, turtles, and snakes are also common to the wetland. The diversity of wildlife also compares favorably with that found in the Okefenokee. Uplands surrounding the wetlands provide good examples of mature longleaf-slash pine flatwoods. A small percentage of the area is in mixed live oak-pine and is home to gopher tortoises and indigo snakes. Dudley's Hammock, a rare example of a mature broadleaf-evergreen hammock community, is found in the area.
Carolina bays by nature tend to be inaccessible because of their large size (Old Field Bay at Grand Bay WMA is 6,000 acres) and the impenetrable nature of shrub communities surrounding them. A .5-mile boardwalk provides access through a cross section of communities on Grand Bay (a 1,400-acre Carolina bay on the WMA). At the end of the boardwalk is a 54-foot-high observation tower overlooking open prairie and a heron rookery in the bay's center.
How to get there: From Valdosta take US Hwy. 221 north apx. 10 miles and turn left on Knight's Academy Road. Go 1.5 miles to the entrance sign on the right. The entrance road leads 1 mile north to a "T". The boardwalk is to your left, the interpretive center and canoe trail entrance to your right.
Management: Georgia DNR, Wildlife Resources Division, 912-423-2988
Habitat Type: Forested Wetlands, Carolina Bays, Scrub/shrub Wetland
Closest Town: Valdosta, GA
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3262