Logging to begin in the Green Swamp Preserve

BRUNSWICK COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — In the coming weeks, don’t be surprised if you log trucks on Hwy 211 at The Nature Conservancy’s Green Swamp Preserve.

The Nature Conservancy is beginning a multi-year project to restore its Green Swamp Preserve in Brunswick County. The end goal is to recreate the robust longleaf forest savannas that existed before Europeans made their mark on the landscape. The Conservancy signed a contract with Canal Woods to conduct the restoration.

“We don’t want people to be concerned if they see logging,” said Angie Carl, who is directing the restoration for The Nature Conservancy. “We’ve got more than a decade of research in the swamp to show us what we need to do to restore the forest. And Canal Woods was chosen because they understand the complexity of working with conservation restoration in a sensitive landscape.”

The Conservancy says originally, the preserve was a mixture of pocosin and longleaf savannas – with widely spaced trees of varying age and an open canopy that allowed sunlight to reach the ground. This ensured that young longleaf and plants such as carnivorous Venus flytraps could thrive.

Longleaf pine forest was once dominant across the southeast – blanketing 90 million acres from North Carolina to Texas.  Today it covers less than five million.  A combination of factors led to the forest demise, including development and removal of fire from the landscape. In many cases, businesses intent on quick profit replaced longleaf forest with faster growing trees such as the slash pine found in the Green Swamp. Slash pine isn’t native to North Carolina, but it will grow here. Because it grows fast it can be harvested much more quickly than longleaf, which takes a hundred years to mature.

Longleaf pine is fire-dependent. Natural fire was a regular part of the landscape – many of the plants that live there need fire to survive. Some species have become endangered as fire was removed from the forest and longleaf dwindled. This list includes the red-cockaded woodpecker, which makes its home almost exclusively in old longleaf pine trees.

Much of the preserve was owned and managed by Federal Paper Board until the company donated it to the Conservancy in 1977.  “The company planted slash pine as a source for pulp to make paper,” Carl explains. “We want to remove most of the slash pine and plant longleaf pine trees.”

For the past decade, the Conservancy has contracted with a researcher who has been studying research plots at the south end of the preserve to determine what works best for longleaf restoration. The preserve has all the makings of a longleaf forest, including the groundcover that is necessary to move fire through the forest.

The Conservancy consulted with several state and federal agencies as it designed the restoration plan, which took four years to develop.

Input was gathered from the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“We wanted to make sure that this restoration was all for the good,” says Carl. “We didn’t want to have any unintended consequences on any of the plants or animals living in the preserve.”

The restoration could take years, because it can only be done in dry times to minimize the effect of heavy equipment on the forest floor.  Because the restoration is dependent on weather conditions, the Conservancy doesn’t have a timeline for when it will end, but it could take several years. The popular preserve trail will remain open throughout the restoration.

Any profit from timber sales will go into the preserve forest restoration fund to purchase longleaf seedlings and conduct controlled burns.