Photo: AP in Tampa Bay Times
“Scientists estimate that longleaf savannas once covered an area bigger than Germany. By the 1990s, less than 3 percent remained in scattered patches.
When European settlers came to North America, fire-dependent savannas anchored by lofty pines with footlong needles covered much of what became the southern
United States. Yet by the 1990s, logging and clear-cutting for farms and development had all but eliminated longleaf pines and the grasslands beneath where hundreds of plant and animal species flourished.
Now, thanks to a pair of modern-day Johnny Appleseeds, landowners, government agencies and nonprofits are working to bring back pines named for the long needles prized by Native Americans for weaving baskets. The trees’ natural range spans the coastal plain, nine states from eastern Texas to southeast Virginia and extending into northern and central Florida.
Longleaf pines now cover as much as 7,300 square miles — and more than one-quarter of that has been planted since 2010.
‘I like to say we rescued longleaf from the dustbin. I don’t think we had any idea how successful we’d be,’ said Rhett Johnson, who founded The Longleaf Alliance in 1995 with another Auburn University forestry professor.
That’s not to say that the tall, straight and widely spaced pines will ever gain anything near their once vast extent. But their reach is, after centuries, expanding rather than contracting…
Of the 1,600 plant species found only in the Southeast, nearly 900 are only in longleaf forests, including species that trap bugs as well as fire-adapted grasses and wildflowers.
The forests harbor turkeys and quail — but also about 100 other kinds of birds, nearly 40 types of animals and 170 reptile and amphibian species found only among longleaf. One is the gopher tortoise whose burrows shelter scores of animal species including mice, foxes, rabbits, snakes, even birds, and hundreds of kinds of insects…
Because most longleaf acreage is privately owned, 80 percent to 85 percent of the planting so far has been on private land, said Carol Denhof, president of The Longleaf Alliance.
Another 5,160 square miles must be planted or reclaimed from stands overly mixed with other tree species to meet the initiative’s 2025 deadline, she said. ‘I’m hopeful we can get there but … we have a lot of work to do.’…
About 400 acres of land returned to longleaf were planted by the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, for their needles. But branches from most of the first planting are now too high to reach. So Gesse Bullock, the tribe’s fire management specialist, said he is pushing for another planting on the 10,200-acre reservation.
Basket weavers include the tribe’s realty officer, Elliott Abbey. ‘When I was younger,’ he said, ‘I thought it was work — something my aunts made me do,’
Now, Abbey said, ‘It strikes me in the heart that this could die out.'”
— Janet McConnaughey, AP, Tampa Bay times
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