America’s Longleaf Celebrates Banner Year

America’s Longleaf is out with its 2021 Range-wide Accomplishment Report, which highlights 2.29 million acres of longleaf management activities across the Southeast – the most acreage since America’s Longleaf formed in 2010.

“Longleaf forests are an economic driver in the region,” said Colette DeGarady, chair of America’s Longleaf, a public-private partnership that that works to grow and manage longleaf forests that once thrived on 90 million acres from Texas to Virginia. Today, longleaf forests account for 4.7 million acres, up from a low of 3.2 million acres, thanks to America’s Longleaf and other conservation partners. 

“Increasing and improving longleaf forests has a myriad of benefits,” she added. “Military installations are buffered from incompatible development that could negatively impact operations. There are also substantial benefits to people and nature including clean air and water, reduced wildfire risk, carbon sequestration, climate change mitigation, and protection of rare species.”

In 2021, the Partnership focused on increasing minority participation in longleaf forestry through the Longleaf for All program, which works to address challenges faced by minority landowners, publishing a report that laid out barriers and proposed actions to address those barriers.

America’s Longleaf was also recognized in the America the Beautiful report, which is a U.S. Department of Interior initiative to conserve, connect, and restore land and water, as an example of landscape level conservation partnership success.

Other 2021 accomplishments include:

• Establishing more than 135,000 acres of new longleaf forests
• Implementing prescribed fire on more than 1.6 million acres of longleaf forests
• Protecting more than 54,000 acres of longleaf forests

Note:  The report covers FY 2021, which ran from October 1, 2020, to September 30, 2021. America’s Longleaf was previously known as America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative

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