Summer 2005

A Conversation with Two Leaders in Longleaf Pine Research

by Claire Payne

Jim Barnett leads the Ecology and Management of Even-Aged Southern Pine Forests Research unit in Pineville, LA. Charlie McMahon led the Vegetation Management Research and Longleaf Pine Research for Southern Forest Ecosystems unit in Auburn, AL. Barnett will soon retire with almost 50 years in the Forest Service. McMahon retired in 2004, after having worked for the Forest Service for 31 years and 10 with the Department of Defense.

When and where did you first see a longleaf pine forest?

Barnett: In 1955, when I first saw a longleaf forest, it was a sea of black stumps--more than hundreds per acre. That grassland near Alexandria, LA, went on for 20 to 30 to 50 miles, southwest to Texas. There were a few mature trees, neat trees with long cones, mainly along the roadway. It was an open range with grazing cattle and hogs, primarily cattle. In the 1960s, I did see a mature longleaf savanna on the Kisatchie National Forest in central Louisiana. Prescribed fire had been used repeatedly, and there was a grass understory. A longleaf ecosystem thrives in southwestern Louisiana on the Calcasieu Ranger District near Fort Polk, LA. Lots of red-cockaded woodpeckers live there. In the western part of the South--Texas, Louisiana, and parts of Mississippi--the timber industry moved across the land practicing railroad logging in the 1910s and 1920s. Steam engines ran on railroad trams, or tracks, pulling a skidder/loader. On each side of the skidder, cables ran out 1,000 to 1,500 feet, pulling in logs. If the trees weren't cut, the cables knocked them down. The skidder, which had a big hole in it, was positioned over the railroad tracks. The railroad cars actually went through the skidder! In Louisiana, several million acres were harvested in this way. Reforestation didn't begin until the 1950s. There was a saying that you could stand on a longleaf stump in Alexandria and see the Mississippi River. The second longleaf harvest began in the 1970s when the stumps were dug up, extracted by bulldozers, or blown out of the ground with dynamite. When I came to the Palustris Experimental Forest, it had been stumped. Someone offered to buy the stumps, but we said we'd keep what we had.

McMahon: When I joined the Southern Station in 1987 as project leader for the silviculture unit in Auburn, I also became responsible for the administration of the Escambia Experimental Forest in southern Alabama. The Escambia is a longleaf pine experimental forest that was established in 1947 in cooperation with the T.R. Miller Mill Company. The Escambia contains all age classes of the tree and many long-term studies and management demonstrations. Up to this point, my experiences and perceptions of longleaf pine were through the eyes of a northern city dweller turned into a "fire and smoke" scientist in 1973 at the former USDA Forest Service Fire Laboratory in Macon, GA. When I transferred to Auburn, things changed . . . daily chats and discussions with Bill Boyer (known as "Dr. Longleaf" to many people), and a few visits to the Escambia gave me a new and broader perspective about the tree, the forest, and the related concerns about the decline of the greater longleaf ecosystem.

Ironically, this was at a time when the Forest Service "new perspectives" and "ecosystem management" philosophies and programs were emerging, bringing national attention to many forest ecosystems that were degraded, fragmented, or otherwise in decline. This provided us (and many other longleaf advocates) with new opportunities to highlight and promote the multiple benefits of longleaf pine to both public and private landowners and managers. Soon longleaf pine research, management, and restoration initiatives began to emerge across the South from several Federal Agencies, and other State and private groups.(...continued...)