Trees for tomorrow

American Forests, Autumn, 1996 by Kathryn Tenusak, Michelle Robbins

Missouri: Arkansas-Missouri Sand Ponds Natural Area

The goal of this Global ReLeaf Forest is long-term wetlands conservation and restoration of sand pond wetlands for Lindera melissifolia, an endangered plant. A joint effort of The Nature Conservancy in Arkansas and the Missouri Sand Ponds Conservation Project will plant 150,000 bottomland hardwood seedlings on 367 acres. Sand ponds, an uncommon wetland habitat, have been hurt by conversion to other uses including rice farming. A number of plants and animals inhabit the area, as do waterfowl, such as mallards, northern pin-tail, blue-winged teal, and wood ducks. The Sand Ponds area is also a stopover point for migrating neotropical songbirds. The project is considered a model restoration effort that will benefit the entire ecosystem, and one that offers boundless educational opportunities to local school groups and to civic and scouting organizations.

Mississippi: St. Catherine Creek National Wildlife Refuge

Scientists are concerned about the migration routes of neotropical songbirds. St. Catherine Creek National Wildlife Refuge, along the Lower Mississippi River near Natchez, is a stopover site for these birds. This Global ReLeaf Forest project, now in its second year, will plant green ash and several species of oak as part of a plan to reestablish a bottomland hardwood forest across most of the former agricultural land. Bringing back the hardwood forest will help restore the original ecosystem and reduce habitat fragmentation, making it an inviting stop-off point for the neotropical birds; a home for the bald eagle, recently downgraded to threatened status, and for the endangered Louisiana black bear and peregrine falcon, as well as for wintering and breeding waterfowl.

The 24,000-acre refuge was acquired in 1990 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which plans to plant 80,000 hardwood seedlings across 540 acres in both 1997 and 1998. Bird-watching and hunting opportunities will be enhanced as well, and the FWS hopes to use St. Catherine Creek as a showcase to prove the consumptive and nonconsumptive benefits provided by a properly managed bottom-land forest are often greater than those of clearing marginal land for agriculture.

New Mexico: Mescalero-Apache Indian Reservation

While the debate goes on over how to handle western wildfires, the problem remains: How to deal with what's left afterward. This multi-year Bureau of Indian Affairs/Mescalero-Apache Indian Reservation project will replace vegetative cover on 757 acres of the Elk and 3,500 acres of the Chino Wells forest fire areas, which burned this past spring. The fires brought both good and bad news to the reservation. Although the fires created conditions that will allow desirable diverse forest conditions in some areas, they consumed overstory and understory vegetation in others. And much of the forest burned by the Elk fire could have provided jobs and wood products for the Mescalero-Apache tribe's sawmill enterprise. The goal is to plant close to 1.3 million seedlings on 4,257 acres over five years. Global ReLeaf Forest funding will support the planting of 100,000 ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir in 1997.