$5.5 million in Longleaf Pine Restoration projects coming

Camp Blanding in Florida. Photo by Leo Miranda, USFWS.

Start growing those longleaf pine forest plants! As part of a historic initative to restore or enhance 1 million acres of longleaf pine ecosystem, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation has announced $5.5 million in grant funding to support 24 longleaf pine ecosystem projects in nine southeastern states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Missisippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

For a full list of projects, including general location, brief abstract, funding amounts and project partners, click here.

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation was chartered by Congress in 1984. The grants were awarded through the Longleaf Stewardship Fund, a public-private partnership including USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services (FWC), Southern Company, International Paper’s Forestland Stewards partnership, Altria Group (Phillip Morris etc.), American Forest Foundation’s Suothern Woods for At-Risk Wildlife Initiative, and Lous Bacon’s Orton Foundation. In the past five years, the fund as invested more than $24.1 million in projects that establish more than 75,600 acres and improve more than 1 million additional acres of longleaf pine forest.