Seeds of a new initiative sown at national Shortleaf Pine conference
The mountain-top plateaus surrounding the Paint Rock Valley were once covered in a forest unlike anything most folks have ever seen. It was a sun-drenched savanna you could see through, rolling hills of stately shortleaf pines over waving meadows of grasses and wildflowers. Wildlife abounded, quail and grouse, deer, buffalo and elk.
And we’re about to lose the last fragments of it.
The Paint Rock Forest Research Center decided we needed to start picking up the pieces, fast. We began by collecting the precious seeds of the shortleaf pines, the first time anyone had made a major effort to collect Eastern shortleaf pine seed in almost a century. That effort, partially funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, helped inspire the national revival of the Shortleaf Pine Initiative. And this November, Alabama hosted the reborn national Shortleaf Pine Conference at Guntersville Lake State Park, with more than 175 participants from Missouri to Ohio to the Carolinas.
The conference was a huge success. The legends of the shortleaf pine revival—Clarence Coffey, Jim Gulden, Dan Dey, Wally Akins, and others—joined forces with a new generation of shortleaf enthusiasts led by Paint Rock Valley’s Carter England and Nature Conservancy foresters Davis Goode and Britt Townsend to create a new vision of shortleaf.
Three days of speakers covered the gamut: the benefits of shortleaf to quail, deer, turkey and rare birds; shortleaf timber management and markets; genetics and fire; and (thanks to landscape artist Phillip Juras) how art can help us see shortleaf. We included tours of some of the South’s best remaining stands of shortleaf at Little River Canyon National Preserve and a working forest restoration on private lands above Paint Rock. And the Research Center staff got to show off their efforts to create shortleaf pine seed orchards at Guntersville State Park, while ensuring the genetic integrity of Eastern shortleaf and the efforts needed to secure enough seed to support a revival.
The fact that so many top scientists and conservationists from around the country came to the Tennessee River Valley is an important reminder: The Research Center isn’t working with the Shortleaf Pine Initiative just because it’s important to Paint Rock and northeast Alabama. Many believe shortleaf is one of the most important trees for the future of the nation’s forests. And our region holds the seeds of that future.