The longleaf pine has long been a part of the Southeast’s landscape, but a new report from the National Wildlife Foundation (NWF) said the longleaf pine forests are disappearing and it’s up to the people of the south to rehabilitate the species.

Don Watson, district forester for the N.C. Division of Forest Resources, District 3, said in his district, which includes Richmond County, there are about 12,000 to 15,000 acres of trees planted each year.

But Watson said most of the pines they plant are loblolly pines because landowners believe they grow faster. However in dry, sandy soils, which is what prominent in Richmond County longleaf pines grow just as fast, if not faster, he said.

The NWF report on the longleaf pine said these ecosystems are important to reduce the effects of global warming, attract a wide-variety of species creating a more diverse ecosystem, provide income for folks who harvest pine straw, and these forests are able to handle severe weather conditions resulting in less damage for landowners.

Watson said he and other foresters plant the trees mostly on private lands. They go out and give recommendations on types of trees that would be good for the type of soil they have and if they have longleaf pines, they do an understory burning because the longleaf has a big seed and needs direct access to the soil in order to germinate. And in longleaf pine forests there are many shrubs and scrub trees that block the soil, which is why they do the burn in order to eliminate those giving way to the longleaf seeds. Longleaf pines also need a large space in which to grow.

A longleaf pine can last up to 450 years, while other pines, including the loblolly can last anywhere from 200 to 275 years.

Other pines, like the loblolly, have seeds that will drop in the fall, lie where they land through the winter and germinate in the spring.

Woodpeckers especially love longleaf pine forests because there’s so much more room for them to fly, Watson said.

Watson said the longleaf pine ecosystem was definitely larger at some point, but the reason we’re losing longleaf is development, “plain and simple. It’s not going to grow in a parking lot.”

Watson said there are, however, more trees in the state now than there were 100 years ago, thanks to replanting efforts.

“As a state we went from agrarian to manufacturing, and as farms stopped being cultivated, trees grew,” Watson explained. “A lot of the trees that were cleared during that time, though, were the longleaf.”

Watson said when the longleaf pines are cleared, more often than not, they are replaced by the loblolly pine.

During the last fiscal year, Watson said his division planted 659 acres of trees in Richmond County, which is down from previous years. For the entire third district, they planted 11,671 acres.

“We’ve had better years,” he said.

The reason — the economy.

The low number of new home starts is just one of the reasons the number has decreased. Because when the number for standing timber goes down, people who clear their land to sell the timber hold off and wait until the prices go back up. So if more people are holding onto their trees, less are being replanted.

Watson said in areas that are cleared and not replanted, within two or three years, trees will have sprouted up anyway just because of the way the seeds travel and germinate. Most of the time, Watson said it’s a mix of trees that will pop up, but usually includes loblollies because they’re the fastest to take over a site.

If the forestry service does the planting, though, they’ll plant trees according to what was on the land before, and what would grow best. Landowners then also get a better deal because they can pick the genetically improved seeds.

Most of the seeds planted in North Carolina come from a nursery in Goldsboro.

Every year, individual counties collects seeds to be sent to the nursery and grown, but Watson said Richmond County collects the most in the district. Last year the county collected about 200 pounds of seeds — these seeds aren’t very big, so that’s a lot of seeds. And Watson said they collect everything from red cedars to black walnut and dogwoods. They also collect the pine tree seeds, longleaf included.

For years the state division of forestry had a Forest Development Program (FDP) that was a reforestation cost-sharing program that helped landowners replant their land. The idea behind the (FDP) is that those in the wood product industry pay for the trees they cut down and it goes into this program. The state would then match what was put in from businesses and that money would be used to help landowners pay for the seeds, etc., to reforest their land.

But, like many other things this year, the FDP program got cut from the state budget, so for the next two years, those funds from businesses will go unmatched, and Watson said the program is unsustainable without matching funds from the state.

“It’ll be a big loss for landowners,” Watson said.

To find out more about the NWF’s longleaf pine report, visit www.nwf.org. And to find out more about what the state division of forestry is doing to preserve the state’s natural ecosystems, visit www. dfr.state.nc.us.

Staff writer Eren Tataragasi can be reached at (910) 997-3111 ext. 19 or at etataragasi@yourdailyjournal.com.