Smith County Tree Removal Project

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) provided an economic development grant through TVA InvestPrep™ funds to Smith County, Tennessee to assist in the purchase of an approximately 119-acre tract of land for use as a proposed industrial site and for associated tree clearing within the tract of land. The primary purpose of tree removal is to enable Smith County to develop the site for future use as an industrial park. In order to do that, the county has to clear designated trees to provide improved visibility of the Project Site from adjacent roads.

8.25 acres of mixed-deciduous forest habitat was cleared from four proposed tree clearing areas. One federally endangered species (gray bat; Myotis grisescens) is known in Smith County. In addition, the USFWS has determined that the federally threatened northern long-eared bat and the federally endangered Indiana bat have the potential to occur throughout the state of Tennessee. Exposure of Indiana bat and northern long-eared bat to the effects of tree removal has the potential to occur when bats are roosting in trees during time of removal, or when bats return to a previously occupied tree to find that the tree is no longer present. To avoid or minimize impacts to bats, tree removal of potentially suitable summer roosting habitat will occur in the winter months between November 15 and March 30. Tree removal was tracked, documented and reported to the USFWS. Given the amount of suitable roost habitat (3.78 acres) proposed for removal, and the abundance of available habitat within the TVA region (TVA, 2017) implementation of the Action Alternative is anticipated to have a negligible impact on available bat habitat within the region.