Longleaf Pine Initiative

Once a plantation and popular hunting spot, the Tall Timbers Plantation Research Station and Land Conservancy in Tallahassee, Florida, is home to healthy longleaf forests that are filled with a variety of wildlife, including the Northern bobwhite, a type of quail. When the plantation’s owner, Henry...

Longleaf pine forests once dominated the Southeast. But over the past two centuries, many of these forests have disappeared along with the wildlife that called them home. Recent efforts to enhance longleaf forests on private lands are helping the ecosystem rebound as well as wildlife like the gopher...

In deep East Texas, pine trees are king. Towering pines line the roads and blanket the rolling countryside and national forests. Loblolly and slash pine dominate the landscape in contrast to the area’s historic longleaf pine trees that once reigned. The reduced number of longleaf pines has not gone...

I have a few decorative items on my desk at work, and some of those are longleaf pine cones. Even though I only learned of the rare longleaf pine forest – and the large pine cones that fall in them each year – a few years ago, it was love at first sight. Longleaf pine forests once covered the...

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...