healthy forest reserve program

When most people think of bats, images of dark caves, vampires and Halloween come to mind. But actually, bats get a bad rap, and we often don’t know how important they are for controlling insects, pollinating plants, dispersing seeds and improving biodiversity.

Many of our nation’s bats are facing population declines to near-extinction levels, primarily because of disease and loss of habitat. One of those species is the Indiana bat, an endangered species that has experienced rapid declines since the 1960s.

Like the mythical phoenix, the very real longleaf pine is rising from the ashes of near-extinction to reclaim its native range in Virginia with the help of committed partners and landowners like Bill Owen.

A musician by profession, Owen is a conservationist at heart who still lives in the family home in Yale, Va. By working with a team of six agencies, including USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, he hopes to realize his dream of planting 1,000 contiguous acres of longleaf pine in his lifetime.