Battle plan to reduce pine beetles also a path to healthier Alabama forests

The grants awarded this year will support 21 projects. (Contributed)
Late last year, when reports started coming in about sightings of southern pine beetles in Alabama forests, Cynthia Ragland and her team wasted no time.
Ragland, district ranger for the Talladega National Forest – Oakmulgee District, which touches seven counties southeast of Birmingham, pulled together interested parties, including foresters, landowners, and state and federal experts. By early spring, a plan was in place.
The southern pine beetle, Dendroctonus frontalis Zimmermann, is the most destructive insect affecting pine trees in the southern U.S. One historical review put the damage from pine beetles at more than $900 million between 1960 and 1990. Another estimate suggests the bug could be present in up to a million acres of trees.
Infestation often begins in unhealthy, injured or stressed trees. But the pine beetle can also invade and overcome healthy trees. Pine beetles have been found to cover swaths of rural forest thousands of acres in size. They can also appear in suburban yards and urban parks.
Some trees have been known to house up to 10,000 of the invasive bugs. When these aggressive critters and their offspring populate a tree, it, has virtually no chance of survival. That’s why Forest Service officials stay alert to their potential presence.
The plan formed this spring by Ragland and her team was built on three elements: First, it had to be a cooperative approach, in which federal and state experts worked closely with landowners to address any infestation – either on public or private lands – and keep the problem from spreading.
But the other two elements of the plan looked ahead: to take advantage of the pine beetle threat to press changes to how Alabama forests are managed – changes that can make forests healthier for the long run.
By addressing the pine beetle problem, foresters and landowners could take steps to advance the restoration of one of Alabama’s most important ecosystems: the longleaf pine forest. And more longleaf provides sanctuary for one of Alabama’s most endangered species; the red-cockaded woodpecker.
“Our plan was to combat the beetle – and work toward forest restoration, or getting our forests as close to natural as they can be. The red-cockaded woodpecker is an indicator of those natural conditions, and we have a responsibility for its recovery,” Ragland said.
In March, a second public meeting was held to unveil the plan. It was well-received, and now Ragland’s team is implementing it.
Where beetle infestation is evident, the Forest Service and landowners are removing problem trees.
“Once an outbreak occurs, either we or the private land owner can salvage what’s left or cut and burn them,” said Ragland. The benefits are two-fold: removing infested trees helps reduce the beetles, while thinning the forest makes it harder for the remaining bugs to spread.
Forest Service officials also have been making use of fire through controlled burns, to reduce undergrowth and encourage the slow-growing longleafs, once the dominant habitat in the Southeast before logging, farming and development reduced it to a fraction of its original size.
Before settlers suppressed them, natural fires from lightning were a critical component in the longleaf pine ecosystem. Fire reduced competition from invasive plants and helped to create the woodland glades that distinguish longleaf pine forests, which are home to an extraordinary number of beneficial plants and animals.
Part of the effort to increase longleaf involves removing loblolly pines from areas of the National Forest. About 30 percent of what is now Oakmulgee District land was planted years ago in fast-growing loblolly, mainly to control soil erosion. Much of that land had previously been used for farming, even though the soil was poor for agriculture.
The planting of loblolly, combined with the suppression of fire, created a landscape that was far from the region’s historic, natural system. In addition to the removal of beetle-infested loblolly taking place under the plan, other loblolly stands are being commercially harvested and will be replaced with longleaf.
Another important element of the plan is education: training landowners to identify pine beetle infestation and take appropriate action – the earlier, the better.
“You can slow them down but not really stop them,” Ragland said. “Education is our first line of defense. If we can detect them soon enough, we have learned a lot about how to contain them.”
Recently Ragland’s team participated in a fly-over of area forests to get a bird’s-eye view of the pine beetle situation. She was pleasantly surprised. “We saw less evidence of pine beetle activity than we had anticipated.”
Ragland is cautious in her optimism. It is early in the year and pine beetle activity will likely pick up as temperatures rise, she said. But there’s a good plan in place and the Forest Service, along with partners such as the Alabama Forestry Commission, are ready to respond.
She recommended landowners stay alert and closely monitor their pine holdings. Still, so far, it’s better than she feared a few months ago.
“It is proof the protective measures seem to be working.”