National Park Service, Nature Conservancy to expand longleaf pine restoration efforts at Big Thicket National Preserve
Expansion of pilot project will use environmentally sensitive timber harvesting of non-native trees to pay for restoring majestic longleaf pine forest
December 13, 2006 — Big Thicket National Preserve and The Nature Conservancy have signed an agreement to conduct selective harvesting of non-native slash pine and other invasive trees in and replace them with rare, native longleaf pine throughout the Turkey Creek Unit of the preserve, an area of nearly 8,000 acres.
The project is an expansion of an innovative pilot project begun in 2003 on 51 acres of the Turkey Creek Unit, in which The Nature Conservancy agreed to manage the conversion of slash pine areas to longleaf pine and its associated ecosystem by contracting with a commercial timber company, as approved by the National Park Service, to remove the slash pine in an environmentally sensitive manner. The company’s harvesting practices were certified according to requirements set forth by the Organization for International Standards (ISO) 14001 Environmental Management System and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.
In the pilot project, the purchase and harvest of the timber provided The Nature Conservancy the ability to donate longleaf pine restoration work of equal value to the Big Thicket National Preserve, allowing project to be self-funded. The Nature Conservancy, which owns and manages the Roy E. Larsen Sandyland Sanctuary in Silsbee, has been active in longleaf pine restoration and management in East Texas for more than 20 years.
The pilot project represented the first time a timber harvest was conducted on a national preserve for the benefit of ecological restoration.
Longleaf pine forests are among the most rapidly disappearing ecosystems in the southeastern United States. Some 70 million acres of majestic longleaf pine forest once stretched from Virginia to Texas, but only 3 percent of this biologically rich natural system survives today. Essential to a variety of endangered and threatened species, the longleaf pine ecosystem has seen major decline due to conversion to loblolly or slash pine for timber production, as well as the suppression of fire, on which the longleaf pine depends.
“We welcome the opportunity to partner with The Nature Conservancy to expand an agreement that has already yielded valuable on-the-ground results,” said Todd Brindle, superintendent of Big Thicket National Preserve. “As National Park Service budgets become ever tighter, agreements like this play a valuable role in protecting and restoring our resources.”
“With the historic loss of longleaf pine systems across Texas, partnerships such as this one with the National Park Service – and others with public agencies, private industry and citizens – are the key to achieving successful restoration and management of this rare habitat,” said Wendy Ledbetter, The Nature Conservancy’s southeast Texas project director.
Encompassing lands acquired only 30 years ago, most of Big Thicket National Preserve is made up of altered landscapes, and restoration of the native land and forests is an important part of the preserve’s mission. In the late 1970s, the preserve implemented a slash pine eradication plan, which ended in the early 1980s due to limited personnel and funding. The 51-acre pilot restoration project – in the north end of the Turkey Creek Unit – was once part of a slash pine plantation.
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The Nature Conservancy is an international, nonprofit organization that preserves plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. To date, the Conservancy and its nearly 1 million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped protect more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. In the Lone Star State, The Nature Conservancy of Texas owns 35 nature preserves and conservation projects and assists private landowners to conserve their land through more than 70 voluntary land-preservation agreements. The Nature Conservancy of Texas protects 250,000 acres of wild lands and, with partners, has conserved close to a million acres for wildlife habitat across the state. Visit The Nature Conservancy of Texas on the Web at nature.org/texas.
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