Incentives Could Save Georgia's Most Imperiled Ecosystem

(3 October, 1996 — Washington, DC) The dramatic and accelerating loss of one of Georgia’s most important ecosystems — longleaf pine forests — could be halted and reversed through a series of landowner-friendly incentives recommended by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

Landowners have long thought longleaf an economically inferior pine species, but a new analysis released today by EDF concludes that planting longleaf can often be competitive with loblolly, and that natural regeneration of longleaf is more profitable than planting either species. Virtually all of Georgia’s remaining longleaf pine is on private land.

When Europeans arrived in Georgia, longleaf pines were the dominant tree in about two-thirds of the state. Today, the tree is gone altogether from at least 30 counties and dramatically reduced nearly everywhere else. Less than half a million acres of longleaf remain in the state, an 80 percent decline since 1955. Causes for the decline include conversion of longleaf forests to loblolly and slash pine plantations, loss of forest land to agriculture and urban expansion, and the exclusion of fire, which has favored hardwood growth at the expense of pines. The EDF study recommends creating incentives for private landowners to maintain current longleaf stands and to convert former longleaf sites back to longleaf production. The recommendations include:

• Targeting federal estate tax relief to landowners who commit to sound management of remaining longleaf stands;

• Revising the state’s 1991 Conservation Use Act, which allowed for preferential property tax rates on environmentally sensitive lands, to make it easier for owners of natural longleaf stands to qualify;

• Targeting the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to plant former crop land with trees, so as to encourage planting of longleaf; since 1985, more than a half million acres of land in Georgia have been planted with trees under this program, but virtually none of the planting has been of longleaf;

• Encouraging investments by utilities and others in longleaf restoration and conservation projects to secure “carbon sequestration credits,” an innovative mechanism to counter global warming as a result of ever-increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.

“These measures are designed to make economic sense to landowners; if implemented, they can restore an important part of Georgia’s historic and natural heritage,” said Robert Bonnie, an EDF economist.

“Because longleaf forests support a broad diversity of flora and fauna, conserving and restoring them is perhaps the single best step to avoid an ever-growing list of endangered species in the state,” said Michael Bean, who directs EDF’s wildlife conservation activities.