DATE: 9/24/04                                                                                                 CONTACT: Dr. George Kessler, (864) 656-4836                                                                     Bob Franklin, (843) 549-2596                                                                                  WRITER: Tom Lollis, (803) 284-3343, ext. 241

Grant to help with prescribed burning in coastal woodlands

CLEMSON – “If you are a landowner with stands of longleaf pine, show the trees a little respect. Burn them once in a while.”

That’s the message that Clemson University hopes to spread among South Carolina landowners with the aid of a $176,000 grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Longleaf pine once stretched across 90 million acres of the Southeast,” said George Kessler, Clemson Extension forester. “Today no more than 2 million acres remain in scattered pockets. Fire is essential to longleaf reproduction.”

“The longleaf pine forest, which once provided one of the most diverse ecosystems anywhere, has been a victim of circumstance,” he said. The slow-growing longleaf, famous as the King of Southern Yellow Pines, produces wood of great strength. It can reach ages of more than 300 years and heights of 120 feet.

By the late 1800s longleaf pine was one of the most sought-after timber trees in the country for bridge, factory and wharf construction and for use as railroad crossties.

With judicious management and replanting the longleaf forest may have been able to survive intense harvesting. However, in the early 20 th century most of the foresters were trained in the North where fire in the forests was destructive, and they decided that fire suppression was needed to help save the longleaf pine because of the uncontrolled use of fire.

“Unfortunately without fire longleaf pine cannot reestablish itself,” said Kessler. “It is the least shade tolerant of all the southern pines. It requires a minimum of 60 percent sunlight on the forest floor to regenerate. The seeds must also be able to contact the soil.”

In the 1920s a lot of farmland and grassland was still being burned. Fires would occasionally escape into the woods.

“The League of Women Voters got very concerned around 1927 and led a major campaign across the South to get burning stopped,” said Kessler. “A lot of state forestry commissions were started about that time with the primary purpose of stopping burning. The U.S. Forest Service campaign with Smokey Bear against forest fires also got people to thinking that all fire is bad, when in reality fire is essential for some species.”

Without a cycle of fire, pine needles and other debris build up on the forest floor, eventually serving as kindling for catastrophic fires. The debris also prevents longleaf seeds from reaching the soil, an effective method of birth control.

“Prior to European settlement in this country, the entire longleaf pine range burned on an average of every three or four years because of fires set either by lightning or by native Americans to keep the brush down and the woods open and grassy,” said Bob Franklin, Clemson Extension area forester in Colleton County.

He said that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grant will be used to help implement conservation practices in forested areas of 12 counties along the South Carolina coast and in the Coastal Plain.

“The funds will primarily go toward prescribed burning in the 2.9 million acres of the Lowcountry Forest Conservation Partnership project, which received a $4 million grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in November of 2003,” said Franklin.

The project area includes parts of Allendale County, most of Jasper, most of Colleton, part of Beaufort and most of Dorchester County. It wraps around the national forest in Berkeley county and the urban area of Charleston County. It includes most of Georgetown County and part of Williamsburg County, touching a little on Horry, Florence and Marion counties along the Pee Dee River.

“We will also be initiating the practices we need to use to begin converting even aged loblolly pine stands into longleaf pine without clear cutting and starting over,” he said. “We’ll also be converting even-age loblolly and longleaf stands into multiple-age structures.”

When stands are filled with trees of different ages, the wildlife habitat is better. The red-cockaded woodpecker, the gopher tortoise, quail, wild turkey and fox squirrel are just a few of the species that prefer longleaf forests.

“You have different layers of canopy in the forest,” said Franklin. “Plus, from a practical standpoint uneven age stands are more resistant to hurricane damage than even-age stands.

“If all the trees are the same size and they are big, they are more likely to blow down and the landowner has nothing left. If you have some big trees, some medium-size trees and some small trees, you may lose some big ones, but you’ll have two-thirds or three-fourths of a stand remaining,” he said. “If a landowner lives within 60-70 miles of the coast, it’s something he ought to look at.”

Franklin said that the use of prescribed burning in wooded areas is less than 20 percent of what it was a generation ago.

“We should be bringing it back. It’s the cheapest way to control competing vegetation and prevent the buildup of hazardous fuel. Forests that have been managed with prescribed burns have less of a chance of being destroyed by catastrophic wildfire,” he said.

He noted that the S.C. Forestry Commission has developed guidelines for controlling smoke, which he urges all practitioners of prescribed burning to follow. Following the guidelines offers some liability protection to the landowner.

Franklin pointed out that even Smokey Bear has begun to use a new language when it comes to fire.

“He used to say: ‘Only you can prevent forest fires.’ Now he says: ‘Only you can prevent wild fires.’”

END