Longleaf Pine Forest Revival
NWF and its partners are helping landowners in the South bring back one of North America’s most diverse and threatened ecosystems
09-19-2012 // Sid Perkins
A STROLL THROUGH A LONGLEAF PINE FOREST is a nature lover’s treat. Found only in the southeastern United States, these forests are home to hundreds of different plants and animals, with as many as 50 species of wildflower, grass, shrub and fern in a single square yard of the forest’s open, sun-bathed floor. Some researchers estimate that thelongleaf pine ecosystem is one of the most diverse outside of the Tropics.
Before Europeans arrived in North America, longleaf pine forests dominated the coastal plain from eastern Texas to southeastern Virginia, with these trees found across about 90 million acres—an area slightly smaller than the state of Montana. Even though longleaf pines can live more than 300 years, today about 97 percent of these forests are just a memory, having fallen to logging, agriculture, urban development or plantation forestry that relies on faster-maturing species such as loblolly and slash pines. Most of the remnants of longleaf forest, including about 10,000 acres of uncut old-growth, are on public lands scattered throughout the trees’ former range.
But in the past five years, NWF and its state affiliate, the Alabama Wildlife Federation (AWF), in a project funded in part by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Southern Company, have collaborated with landowners in central and southern parts of Alabama to restore long-leaf pine on their land (See “America’s Forgotten Forest,” National Wildlife, April/May 2008). NWF also works with landowners in Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina to raise awareness of the benefits of these forests. During the first phase of the longleaf restoration project in Alabama, which began in 2007 and ended last year, landowners replanted trees on more than 6,000 acres. “The program was a huge success,” says Amadou Diop, senior manager for NWF’s Forestry Program.
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