Summer 2005

Restoring Longleaf in the Wake of the Southern Pine Beetle

by Zoë Hoyle

A native insect pest continues to rampage through the pines of the Southeast, leaving the green hills of summer splotched with brown. The southern pine beetle has damaged more than a million acres over the last decade, with economic losses estimated at $1.5 billion. With pine covering 60 percent of the 212 million acres of land in the South, more losses lie ahead.

"Even though southern pine beetle populations have declined since 2003, we estimate that 15 million acres of pines are still at moderate to high risk for infestation," says John Nowak, the Forest Health Protection entomologist who heads up the Southern Pine Beetle Prevention and Restoration Program initiated by the Forest Service in 2003.

The prevention part of the program represents a shift away from a reactive stance--suppressing beetle attacks as they arise--towards preventing attacks by applying forest management practices such as thinning to existing stands. Restoration addresses areas impacted by infestation, and consists of removing trees killed by southern pine beetle and replanting to restore the forest.(...continued...)