NRCS is working with private forest landowners to protect, restore, and improve longleaf ecosystems in Bamberg and Barnwell Counties. Longleaf Ecosystem Restoration in South Carolina Longleaf Pine Video (You will leave this site.) Working with NRCS staff, they created a 3D animation video that captures the beauty and ecological importance of longleaf pine forests. Recently, students at the Boston University Center for Digital Imaging asked if they could use their digital animation skills to lend their support for longleaf pine. Contact your local Service Center for further guidelines and details of the program. The initiative is enabling approved participants to receive financial assistance for implementing conservation practices including site preparation, planting longleaf pine, installing firebreaks, conducting prescribed burning, and controlling invasive plants. Through the Longleaf Pine Initiative and other conservation partners are working with forestland owners in nine states, including here in South Carolina, to restore longleaf pine forests.

Factors contributing to the demise of this ecosystem include fire suppression efforts, clearing for agriculture and development, aggressive logging at the turn of the last century, and conversion to other pine types for faster growth and profits. About half of these surviving stands of longleaf pine exist on public lands. Today, only scattered patches of the longleaf pine/wiregrass ecosystem occur, primarily in the coastal plains of the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. This unique ecosystem, shaped by thousands of years of natural fires that burned through every two to four years, has been reduced to fewer than two million acres, representing a 97 percent decline in this important ecosystem. The longleaf pine ecosystem once covered approximately 90 million acres in the Southeastern United States.

Longleaf Pine Initiative in South Carolina Continuous Signup

Trees leaf guide of south carolina