Last month, Southern Highlands Reserve and partners in the Southern Appalachian Spruce Restoration Initiative (SASRI) kicked off a multi-year red spruce restoration project that will add 10,000 new trees to the rare forests of the Southern Blue Ridge. Staff from SHR, the National Forest Foundation, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, the U.S. Forest Service, and The Pisgah Conservancy (TPC), along with volunteers from Rosman High School, gathered at Graveyard Fields, one of the most popular hiking destinations along the Blue Ridge Parkway, to plant 83 red spruce trees.
“The work we’ve put in with our partners for more than a decade, with 6,000 trees planted in three states, has paved the way for more large-scale restoration projects,” said SHR Executive Director Kelly Holdbrooks. “This is a new era for forest restoration, and partnerships make all the difference in accomplishing monumental change.”
SHR staff propagated the trees nearly five years ago with seeds collected in Pisgah National Forest. The project was delayed by COVID-19, National Environmental Protection Act clearance, and most recently, Hurricane Helene.
Graveyard Fields was once a spruce-fir forest that was lost to logging and wildfires in the first part of the 20th century. The project has been on SASRI’s radar for nearly a decade, with a goal of building back a mixed canopy ecosystem that includes both deciduous trees and evergreens. The planting site is located two miles from the trailhead and will extend nearby habitat of the federally listed Carolina northern flying squirrel (CNFS). Logistics required utility task vehicles for transporting the two-foot-high trees in gallon buckets.
The dream of this project began nearly a decade ago when wildlife biologists identified CNFS in forests adjacent to this area. In the early days of SASRI, partners focused on sites with easier access. Now that SASRI has more partners on board, more difficult projects at sites like Graveyard Fields are possible.
This planting, the first for Graveyard Fields, also marks the first step in a large-scale U.S. Forest Service and TPC project that also includes trail repair and streambank restoration.
“We’re thrilled to have TPC on board with red spruce restoration,” said Holdbrooks. “Partnerships are crucial for the work we do, and we are grateful to be part of such an extraordinary team of conservationists.”