Red River Radio Presents: Conserving Earth – Improving the habitat in your yard with native plants.

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The Texas Longleaf Team

The Texas Longleaf Team was created to establish and restore upland and wetland longleaf pine savannas. This occurs through work with public and private forest landowners across the historic range of the longleaf pine in East Texas. The longleaf pine ecosystem is one of the scarcest plant communities in the Southeastern United States. Of former longleaf pine landscapes, less than 3 percent remains of the Southeastern landscape and only 2 percent of the original 3 million acres remains in East Texas. Longleaf pine communities are essential for migratory birds, resident wildlife, and a host of rare and endemic plants and animals. Additionally, fire-maintained longleaf pine forests use 15 percent less water than fire-excluded systems due to their drought resilience and severe weather adaptations, and sequester carbon longer than other southern pine species due to their long life-span. Sound stewardship of longleaf pine forests can create diverse sources of income for forest landowners through forestry products, hunting and recreational leases, carbon trading, and other mitigation programs. Through broader messaging to foster awareness, the team will expand their work with industrial and family forestland owners and managers.

The Texas Longleaf Team recently had a chance to work with Texan by Nature to produce a film celebrating the work we do, highlighting one of our landowner partners, Pine Island. The beauty of this project is that its a multi-agency, interdisciplinary group of those who are interested in assisting landowners at this unique nexus of restoring and enhancing the longleaf pine ecosystem while continuing to generate income from the forest. As NRI’s Jenny Sanders says, “That’s the mission of the Texas Longleaf Team.” Watch the film to learn more!