May 23, 2013
HOLT, Fla. (AP) -- The Florida Forest Service will receive nearly $1 million to restore thousands of acres of longleaf pines in the Florida Panhandle.
Ninety million acres of longleaf pines once grew throughout the Southeast. Just a fraction of those vast forests remain because the trees were clear-cut for development in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Florida Forest Service has received a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant to restore roughly 59,000 acres of longleaf pine stands in the Blackwater River, Pine Log and Point Washington state forests.
Grants also will fund other longleaf restoration projects from North Carolina to Mississippi.
Longleaf pines can grow to be more than 100 feet tall and live for centuries.
