JOB - Logging in the early 1900s turned West Virginia's lush, half-million-acre virgin red spruce forest into a wasteland of stumps and slash.
When the logging trains and crews moved on, the unshaded forest floor - littered with treetops, limbs and decaying vegetation - became tinder for a series of devastating fires that often burned to the mineral soil. The charred and eroded earth that once supported the red spruce was slow to regenerate the highland evergreen.
Today, West Virginia is home to fewer than 50,000 acres of red spruce forest. But an effort is underway to restore the evergreen to as much of its former range as possible.
Jack Tribble of the U.S. Forest Service and his son, Riley, 8, were among those taking part in an Earth Day red
spruce restoration project in a remote section of Randolph County.
Last year, several state and federal agencies and nonprofit conservation groups signed an agreement to cooperate in restoring the red spruce to the highland forests of West Virginia.
On Tuesday - Earth Day - about 60 members of those groups, along with family members and other volunteers, put last year's words into action by planting 5,000 2-year-old red spruce seedlings on 25 acres of a 350-acre tract of private land.
The land, on a slope of spruce-topped Phares Knob, is surrounded by the Monongahela National Forest.
"The idea is to speed up the natural regeneration that's occurring and connect existing spruce forests by planting seedlings in the land that separates them," said Ashton Berdine of The Nature Conservancy in West Virginia, one of the organizations that signed the agreement.
"It takes a long time for red spruce to reproduce and disperse. We're just trying to speed that process up a little."
Having larger tracts of unbroken spruce forest not only accelerates the regeneration process, it also protects the high-altitude, shade-seeking plant and animal species that call it home.
"A lot of species can't cross those areas between the red spruce forests," said John Schmidt of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Elkins office. Among them, he said, are the Cheat Mountain salamander, an endangered species, and the West Virginia northern flying squirrel, a species his agency recently recommended for removal from Endangered Species Act protection due to its apparently rebounding population.
"One of our interests in restoration is to increase the amount of habitat for threatened and endangered species and the many other species of plants and animals that live in the red spruce forest," Schmidt said.
"We like the idea of increasing the habitat for endangered species," said Rusty Morgan of Jefferson County, who, with his wife, Cricket, owns the land on which the spruce planting took place. "They're also very beautiful trees - and trees the deer don't seem to be interested in eating."
JOB - Logging in the early 1900s turned West Virginia's lush, half-million-acre virgin red spruce forest into a wasteland of stumps and slash.
When the logging trains and crews moved on, the unshaded forest floor - littered with treetops, limbs and decaying vegetation - became tinder for a series of devastating fires that often burned to the mineral soil. The charred and eroded earth that once supported the red spruce was slow to regenerate the highland evergreen.
Today, West Virginia is home to fewer than 50,000 acres of red spruce forest. But an effort is underway to restore the evergreen to as much of its former range as possible.
Last year, several state and federal agencies and nonprofit conservation groups signed an agreement to cooperate in restoring the red spruce to the highland forests of West Virginia.
On Tuesday - Earth Day - about 60 members of those groups, along with family members and other volunteers, put last year's words into action by planting 5,000 2-year-old red spruce seedlings on 25 acres of a 350-acre tract of private land.
The land, on a slope of spruce-topped Phares Knob, is surrounded by the Monongahela National Forest.
"The idea is to speed up the natural regeneration that's occurring and connect existing spruce forests by planting seedlings in the land that separates them," said Ashton Berdine of The Nature Conservancy in West Virginia, one of the organizations that signed the agreement.
"It takes a long time for red spruce to reproduce and disperse. We're just trying to speed that process up a little."
Having larger tracts of unbroken spruce forest not only accelerates the regeneration process, it also protects the high-altitude, shade-seeking plant and animal species that call it home.
"A lot of species can't cross those areas between the red spruce forests," said John Schmidt of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Elkins office. Among them, he said, are the Cheat Mountain salamander, an endangered species, and the West Virginia northern flying squirrel, a species his agency recently recommended for removal from Endangered Species Act protection due to its apparently rebounding population.
"One of our interests in restoration is to increase the amount of habitat for threatened and endangered species and the many other species of plants and animals that live in the red spruce forest," Schmidt said.
"We like the idea of increasing the habitat for endangered species," said Rusty Morgan of Jefferson County, who, with his wife, Cricket, owns the land on which the spruce planting took place. "They're also very beautiful trees - and trees the deer don't seem to be interested in eating."
The Morgans, accompanied by their grandchildren, were among those planting red spruce seedlings. Others taking part were personnel from the Monongahela National Forest, state Division of Natural Resources, Federal Highway Administration, state Division of Highways, Trout Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Volunteers from Elkins High School rounded out the planting crew.
Red spruce restoration in West Virginia got off the ground in 2000, with seedling plantings in Cranesville Swamp in Preston County and Blister Swamp in Pocahontas County, and subsequent plantings in Canaan Valley.
In 2006, American Forest's Global Re-Leaf program funded The Nature Conservancy's planting of 3,000 red spruce seedlings on Spruce Mountain in Pendleton County, and last year underwrote TNC's planting of 9,000 red spruce in Canaan Valley. This year, Global Re-Leaf is footing the bill for planting 20,000 red spruce and balsam fir seedlings in Canaan Valley.
Other red spruce plantings this year have taken place at Blister Swamp and Bear Rocks. The DNR paid for the trees planted on the Morgan property on Tuesday.
With help from The Nature Conservancy and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, more than 16,000 red spruce and balsam fir seedlings have been planted in Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge from 2000 to 2007.
"What's neat about the red spruce planting is that lately, we've all joined together to help each other out," said Amy Cimarolli, the Nature Conservancy conservation ecologist who coordinates the Global Re-Leaf projects in West Virginia.
"I look to finding other opportunities like this in the years to come," said Tom Chapman, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Elkins office, who was among the spruce planters. "In this day and age, if you strike out on your own, it's so hard to do the work you want to do. But when agencies and landowners work together, we can accomplish a lot."
Cimarolli credits Dave Saville of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy with making the red spruce restoration effort possible by "having the vision years ago to start collecting seeds" from native stock to begin the propagation of nursery stock suitable for planting in West Virginia.
Tuesday's activity was not all work. During a lunch break, Schmidt and other members of the planting crew grilled hot dogs and burgers topped with freshly dug and sautéed ramps.
Volunteers ate, took in the view, and imagined what their efforts would eventually produce.
"I hope that some day in my lifetime," Cimarolli said, "I will come back here and walk through this land and see the trees we planted today towering way over my head."
To contact staff writer Rick Steelhammer, use e-mail or call 348-5169.
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