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White House Initiative Selects Longleaf Pine Forests for Large-Scale Restoration

added 3.14.12

America’s Great Outdoors, an initiative launched by the White House to reconnect Americans with their natural heritage, has selected the South’s longleaf pine forests as one of five iconic U.S. landscapes slated for large-scale conservation. This provides a huge boost to the ongoing work of SELC and its partners to restore these forests, which once covered 90 million acres on the southern coastal plain.

America’s Longleaf and America’s Great Outdoors are already working together to accelerate restoration of this ecosystem on public lands and to increase financial and technical assistance for private landowners wishing to take part. Other landscapes targeted for conservation by America’s Great Outdoors include the grasslands of the northern Great Plains, the Crown of the Continent in the northern Rockies, the Southwest deserts, and the northern forests of New England and New York.

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Federal Officials Agree to Support Longleaf Conservation

added 7.14.10

On June 28, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack came to Charleston, South Carolina, to meet with forestland owners, conservationists, and other citizens to discuss restoration of the longleaf pine ecosystem. The gathering was one of a series of “listening sessions” the Obama administration is holding around the country as part of its America’s Great Outdoors Initiative, launched in April.

Secretary Vilsack, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, also joined high-ranking officials from the Departments of Defense and Interior in signing a formal agreement to help implement the conservation plan developed by SELC and its partners in the America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative, including our goal of expanding the longleaf ecosystem to 8 million acres in 15 years.