Cameron Gammill has only been stationed at the 9,512-acre Lexington Wildlife Management Area since the spring of 2023, but the days have already become a blur. Between busy burning, planting, and hunting seasons, it’s all too easy to move to the next item on the list and overlook the large and small changes he and Technician Andrew Coffey have made in a year’s time. 

“I see the area every day so it’s tough to notice the big changes a month can make,” Gammill said.

To help capture those changes, we visited one of Lexington WMA’s management units at the start of every month in 2024 for a simple photo monitoring project that tracked the before and after views of a prescribed fire. After deciding on the location within the unit, a pin was dropped, and the photo point was visited as close to the first Thursday morning of the month as possible. The compass direction of the first photo was jotted down and trees in the background became landmarks for future photos. 

“The photos helped so much. You can see the burn come through and within two months there was knee-deep grass.”

🎥 Click to watch a year of growth at a Lexington WMA photo point. Cumulative rainfall is shown each month.

As part of a 12-person crew, Gammill and Coffey burned a 760-acre unit on Feb. 21, 2024. The unit is on a three-year burn rotation to maintain the area’s historic Cross Timbers habitat conditions and benefit game species like deer, turkey, and quail. 

Prescribed fire is a staple for WMA biologists across the state, offering a low-cost and high-reward way of managing wildlife habitat and improving hunting opportunities on public lands. On average, wildlife biologists like Gammill burn about 125,000 acres on WMAs each year. And while the result of individual burns can vary with factors like relative humidity on burn day and length of time to the next rain event, Gammill was happy with this burn unit’s response. 

“We got a very good burn. The wind pushed it just right and burned the leaf litter, grass, and even fallen timber in the unit. It was a ‘clean-slate' burn.”

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Lighting a match for habitat undoubtedly changes the existing vegetation and takes time to recover. But for this burn, the flames were out within hours and the soot lasted only a few weeks longer. Within 10 days of the burn – and after only a tenth of an inch of rain – green regrowth was pushing through the black, recycling nutrients, and representing the start of new habitat. Watching that progression through a series of monthly photos may make it easier to get inspired for the upcoming burn season and to light the next match. 

Pointers for a Productive Photo Point

With the rise of cellphones, monitoring habitat changes has never been easier. Smartphones, owned by an estimated 91% of Americans, are typically within reach and often come with high quality cameras and the ability to store photos in albums and even set repeating reminders. Photo points can be a productive way to monitor habitat changes when the same place is visited at regular intervals, and photos are reviewed with notes of the management efforts and vegetation response. 

• Same Place: Snapping photos from the window of a vehicle at “about the same place” may work in a pinch, but establishing a semi-permanent station can help ensure photos are taken from the same location and same perspective time after time. A t-post or hefty rock can mark the spot, and including a nearby landmark in the shot can help with perspective. While these markers may occasionally get in the way of vehicles or tractors, smaller rocks or sticks can easily disappear in the year’s new growth or be washed away by heavy rains. A simple platform on top of a t-post can take your photo point to the next level, allowing a phone or camera to be placed in the same spot every visit.   
  
  Dropping a pin and taking photos from the same location can help your eye focus on the real changes instead of creating doubt.  
   
• Same Time: The number of visits to a photo point can vary depending on your monitoring goals. Monthly photos can show large-scale changes, but temporarily switching to weekly visits may also capture the regrowth after a prescribed burn or native reseeding effort. Day length, time changes, and life in general make it difficult to visit the site at the exact same time, but returning to the photo point within a loose window – early morning, mid-morning, late afternoon – can add consistency and limit the influence of shadows.
  
  Life can get hectic, so scheduling visits in your calendar or phone can help keep monitoring top of mind. Scheduling photos from trail cameras may be another option for monitoring change through time. 
   
• Take Notes: Writing down your observations – either in a notebook or by adding captions to images on your phone – can help you recall noticeable changes and events. Weather conditions, particularly rainfall amounts or wind speeds or relative humidity readings on burn day, can be especially meaningful and are available from online resources like the Oklahoma Mesonet. Jotting down monthly observations and then reviewing those notes can make it easier to plan future management practices. 

Photo points, like the one at Lexington WMA, are a relatively easy way for managers to monitor the impact of their work and make results-based decisions for future projects. With a little bit of planning and follow-through, photo points can show the regrowth after a fire, the effectiveness of a reseeding or brush management project, or even what happens if an area goes without a burn or other management practices.