Looking for Longleaf

Author Q&A

Copyright (c) 2004 by the University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.




A Conversation with Lawrence S. Earley
Author of Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of an American Forest

Q: The longleaf pine once covered 92 millionacres from Virginia to Texas, but now only about 3% of the originalstand survives. What happened?
A: The disappearance of longleafpine had a number of causes. A lot of longleaf fell to the needs ofearly settlers for places to live and farm. Hogs ranging freely throughthe forests consumed unimaginable amounts of longleaf seedlings,hindering the tree's reproduction. Longleaf also was exploited incompletely unsustainable ways for turpentine and lumber and, in thetwentieth century, foresters tried to protect longleaf pine forests fromfires out of a mistaken belief that fire prevented the tree fromreproducing. Ironically (or tragically) it was fire suppression thatprevented forest reproduction, not fire. Later, naturally growinglongleaf stands were deliberately replaced on many commercialforestlands with plantations of faster-growing species such as loblollypine and slash pine.

Q: How does the longleaf pine differ fromother kinds of pine?
A: Longleaf is the most resinousof any southern pine, a factor that made it the leading source ofturpentine and other naval stores for two hundred years. Its wood wasprized for its beauty and strength, with more heartwood than any othersouthern pine. Longleaf pine needles are also the longest of all thesouthern pine families, and they fall annually. The longleaf's needlesare highly flammable, and help to fuel the fires that are critical tothe forest's reproduction. The tree's thick bark, large seed size, andslow growth during its early years enable longleaf to thrive in thesefire-prone areas.

Q: How would you describe the longleaf pine'sgrowth cycle?
A: If other southern pines aresprinters, achieving height growth quickly, the longleaf pine is morelike a long distance runner. The tree germinates quickly, but puts mostof its growth below ground in the form of a long taproot. For the firstfew years of its life, a longleaf pine seedling huddles low on theground and looks like a clump of grass. It continues to grow slowly forthe first seven years of its life, but then spurts quickly, growing fouror five feet in height each year. It begins to bear cones when it isabout 25 years old, and it can live for about 500 years.

Q: Why did you decide to write about thelongleaf pine?
A: It really grew out of aninterest in the naval stores industry. Tar making and turpentining weremajor industries in North Carolina in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, and very colorful ones. Yet I couldn't find anything writtenabout them that was easily accessible to the ordinary reader. So I said,why not write a book about turpentining? Well, after doing some researchI began to realize I couldn't write about the industry without knowingsomething about the tree and the forest. And from there it just grew toembrace the ecosystem, and the critters and plants, and then the historyof the management of the forest.

Q: Would you agree that your book is as muchabout American and southern history as it is about naturalhistory?
A: Human history takes place in aphysical setting that's not just a backdrop to what occurs there but isa material cause of it. I'm not a historian, but I bet you can make astrong argument that you can't understand southern history withoutunderstanding the landscape and the natural communities that are part ofthis landscape. Forests, rivers, soils—these are the raw materials outof which people make their lives and their histories. Longleaf pineforests, for example, were part of the complex reasons that moved theEnglish to settle Virginia, because the English realized that the treescould be used to make tar, which was essential for their navy. Tounderstand why these trees were so rich in the resin that made tar is toadd another dimension to the understanding of human history in America,and southern history in particular.

Q: What makes the longleaf pine forest socomplex and so difficult for ecologists to understand?
A: I think ecologists would saythat all ecosystems are complex and difficult to understand because theyare made up of many plant and animal species that interrelate in complexways. It can take a long time for a scientist, for example, tounderstand the life history of a single plant and the moth or butterflythat pollinates it. Learning how individual wildlife species arepeculiarly adapted to open longleaf forests that burn a lot has takentime. An ecosystem is made up of thousands of interrelationships andadaptations like these.

Understanding forests of longleaf well enough to manage themsuccessfully has proven very difficult. Some tree species reproduceeasily—loblolly pine, for example. The longleaf pine, on the other hand,had a reputation for being difficult to grow, and that reputation hasdiscouraged a lot of landowners from keeping it or planting it. That haschanged in recent years due to the dogged work of foresters who havedevoted decades to understanding how best to manage it.

Q: Where can one find longleaf pines?
A: You can find publiclyaccessible longleaf forests in every coastal southern state, fromVirginia to Texas. I think the best way to find out where they are is tocontact the state offices of The Nature Conservancy or the U.S. ForestService or the state forest service. The Conservancy has a tremendousinterest in conserving longleaf, and some of the most important forestsare being managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

Q: What can a visitor to a longleaf pineforest expect to see, smell, and hear?
A: One thing to note right off isthat there is no single type of longleaf pine. Longleaf communitiesdiffer quite a lot. You could walk through a longleaf forest growing insandy soils and it would look and feel very different than some longleafforests growing in wetter and richer soils. It all depends on the typeof soil where the forest grows and the amount of moisture in it and howoften it has burned—longleaf needs frequent fire to survive. The onesthat look the best have been burned regularly.

But all longleaf pine forests share certain characteristics. They're mostly open, with widelyspaced trees—that's the main difference between this type of forest andhardwood forests like a Piedmont oak and hickory forest. And if they'vebeen managed well and been frequently burned, they will have aflourishing groundcover consisting of grasses and a diversity ofwildflowers. You'll see large fallen pinecones and a brown litter ofpine needles. You'll smell the pine fragrance, and you'll hear thewonderful sound of the wind in the pine topsÑa lot like the distantsound of the surf.

Q: For many years, you were the editor ofWildlife in North Carolina magazine. How did this experience prepare youfor writing this book?
A: When I first began working atWildlife in North Carolina, I was given a monthly natural history columncalled "Nature's Ways" to write. That pressure to research and writeeach month on a wildlife-related topic was really my training forwriting this book, as were the longer feature stories I wrote onconservation issues and natural areas like saltwater marshes andmountain bogs and swamps and rivers. I shamelessly took advantage of thewillingness of experts all across the state to get out in the field withme and answer my questions. It was like having a 20-year course inwildlife biology, ecology, and botany taught one-on-one by some of thebest scientists in the South.

Q: Is the longleaf pine threatened with extinction?
A: When I began writing Lookingfor Longleaf, my sense was that longleaf pine was doomed, or at leastthat was what most of the biologists and ecologists I talked to said. Iwas surprised to find that my story line changed in the fifteen years ittook me to write the book. I can't say that the pessimism has totallylifted, not with the growth that the South is undergoing and thepressures on its forests, but there's a lot more energy in the longleafworld than before. There are landowners actually planting longleaf.People are beginning to see that it can be an economic asset. Lawsprotecting endangered species such as the red-cockaded woodpecker haveforced the Forest Service to be better stewards of their longleafholdings, and the Forest Service has embraced an ecosystem managementmodel that looks very promising. There's a group, the Longleaf Alliance,that is working with private landowners all around the South who want togrow longleaf. These things didn't exist fifteen years ago.

Q: What else can be done to save the longleaf pine?
A: I don't think the issue iswhether longleaf pine will be saved. There will most likely always beremnant forests of longleaf in the South. At the very worst, they'll belike zoos#151;people will visit just to see what a longleaf pine tree or aforest of them looks like. The real issue is whether longleaf will beable to continue to function as an ecosystem—whether fires will stillrun through these forests and maintain them in good condition, whetherthe interconnectedness of the plants and animals will continue orwhether some individual species will drop out and threaten the wholeedifice.

You know, nature isn't modest and tidy. Think of the tallgrass prairiesof the Midwest, how vast they were. Think of the oceans. And think ofthe extent of the longleaf pine forest—sprawling throughout the coastalregions of the South from Virginia to Texas. Nature seems to likeredundancy and prodigality, and what I mean by that is big vast systems.Well, we've lost the big vast system of longleaf pine. We don't haveenough of it to experience that, and there's no way we will ever get itback. That's a real loss.

What we can do, and it's something I'm hopeful about, is continue to use the publicly ownedlongleaf pine forests in our national forests and military lands wisely,and give private landowners incentives to grow longleaf so they can makemoney from it. Manage it well so it reproduces itself and keeps all ofthe connections. And also, spread the word: here's a native forest introuble, possibly making it back to health, right here in the South.Kids don't have to study the rainforests, as biologically diverse andimportant as they are, to study basic environmental lessons. We haveincredible environmental lessons to be learned right here in ourbackyard.

For more information about the preservation of longleaf pine forests,take a look at the following websites:

• The Nature Conservancy: www.tnc.org
  
• Longleaf Alliance: www.longleafalliance.org
  
• Tall Timbers Research Station: www.ttrs.org
  
• Forest History Society: www.lib.duke.edu/forest/
  
• U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service: www.fs.fed.us/