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<\/a>\nInstead of planting fast-growing slash or loblolly pines just to burn up in a biomass plant,\nhow about\n<\/a>\nInstead of planting fast-growing slash or loblolly pines just to burn up in a biomass plant,\nhow about\n\nplant the south’s iconic longleaf pine trees to capture and hold carbon from the atmosphere?<\/a>\n\n\u201cLongleaf should be the centerpiece of land-based carbon sequestration efforts in the Southeast,\u201d the report states, urging that national policymakers make the ecosystem as high a priority as the Everglades or Chesapeake Bay.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe report is\nRestoring the Longleaf Pine: Preparing the Southeast for Global Warming<\/a>, Published December 10, 2009 by the National Wildlife Federation and two southeast forest conservation groups, America\u2019s Longleaf, and The Longleaf Alliance.\n\nPeople rightly worry about deforestation in the Amazon basin of Brazil, but forget or\nnever knew that we already did that right here in the southeast:\n\n\n
\nLongleaf pine has a storied history in the development of the South. As the dominant native pine of the region, its high-quality wood was used in both residential and commercial structures, including homes across the country and U.S. naval ships. Longleaf forests also provided a variety of other economic products including turpentine, pine straw, and recreational hunting habitat. Unfortunately, overcutting and replacement by short-rotation pine species or agricultural crops has greatly diminished the extent of longleaf pine. It once covered more than 90 million acres across eight states along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, but now is found on less than 3 percent of its historic range.\n<\/blockquote>\n\nA longleaf pine forest is the most biologically diverse forest outside\nof a tropical rainforest.\nMany of its species are endemic, occuring nowhere else, such as\nthe red-cockaded woodpecker, Bachman’s sparrow, and indigo snake.\nOthers range more widely, but like longleaf:\nfox squirrel, gopher tortoise, and summer tanager.\nPlant species are even more numerous, such as wiregrass, pitcher plants,\nsix kinds of blueberries, three of huckleberries, and gallberries.\nMost people have no idea of\n\nwhat grows in the remaining patches of these woods.<\/a>\n
\nThis trend of deforestation didn’t stop with cutting down almost all the\noriginal forest cover of Georgia: then we started paving it over.\nJust before the recent economic recession Atlanta was paving 55 acres a day.\n
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<\/a>\nSure, none of us will live that long, but right now there’s little\nmarket for pulpwood, and biomass plants emit CO2<\/sup> and particulates.\nSo there’s an immediate economic benefit to planting longleaf,\nfor example through the Conservation Reserve Program managed by the Georgia\nFarm Service Agency.\nThere is stimulus money to do even more of that. Plus:\n