They're burning a rare ecosystem to heal it, a few dozen acres at a time.
who historically lived in Alabama and Georgia, routinely conducted prescribed burns, setting low-intensity fires that would clear out underbrush, promote the growth of diverse plants, and create ecological niches for various wildlife to thrive. As European colonists pushed westward, they excluded fire from newly settled landscapes, removing an integral cycle from the environment.
After noticing the extent of the longleaf pine forest’s change over her lifetime, including the overgrowth of invasive plants and a lack of access to edible and medicinal plants that were more abundant when she and her grandmother were younger, Thrower asked herself, “What are the grand, sweeping, huge things we can do to really make a difference? The biggest answer is always fire.”The longleaf pine ecosystem once encompassed 90 million acres from Virginia to Texas. Today, it only adds up to 4.
Nearly every part of the longleaf pine ecosystem depends on fire for maintenance and reproduction. Burning helps open up forests to receive more ground-level sunlight, allowing new pines and other flora to sprout. Otherwise, shade-tolerant plants, like red maple and sweet gum, outcompete the local species. “[The forest] just gets overgrown by those other trees, and it’ll die eventually because it’s not getting enough light,” Alexander says. “So fire is the mechanism to kill those other trees.
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