Southern Highlands Reserve: Restoring Red Spruce
This is a story that started a long, long time ago, when pockets of high-elevation spruce-fir forests survived the Ice Age, and its subsequent glacial retreat left behind a string of natural green “islands in the sky” across our Southern Appalachian Mountains.
Fast-forward to when the earth had warmed, and particularly as more and more humans had migrated into the area, and much of that once-pristine wilderness unfortunately is been decimating by both logging and wildfire.
Fast-forward to today, and what’s left of these forests — along with the many endangered and threatened species that call them home — now faces a new and potentially fatal struggle: the rising temps and drought of climate change.
And then press STOP, because the story’s about to change.
In 2005, the staff at Southern Highland Reserve, a native plant arboretum and research center on Toxaway Mountain, began to propagate red spruce seedlings to add to its own ecological system.
In 2009, after a chance connection with Chris Kelly, a wildlife biologist with the NC Wildlife Resource Commission, SHR began to provide some of those young trees to help grow species habitat for the endangered Carolina northern flying squirrel.
By 2013, SHR and The Nature Conservancy had collaborated on a partnership with a bigger plan to restore red spruce throughout many nearby ranges.
Finally, in 2015, the Southern Appalachian Spruce Restoration Initiative was born. SASRI members include the Southern Highlands Reserve, The Nature Conservancy, and numerous state, federal, non-profit, and university organizations including the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, and others.
Each organization brings a specific set of talents and resources to reach the ambitious goals laid out in a red spruce restoration plan for Western NC and other Southern Appalachian sites.
You could say that Southern Highlands Reserve has the most foundational role in this effort—both because of their early historical involvement and also because the red spruce seedlings for the project start their lives at the Reserve, where reliable and effective methods for producing them from local seed have been developed.
Those methods—as well as the Reserve’s elevation, topography, and the climate of the production site, which mimic conditions at final restoration sites, reducing transplant shock—have resulted in an impressive 90% reported success rate. Seedlings are also allowed to grow to 1-gallon trees before planting to increase their odds of survival.
According to Kelly Holdbrooks, the Executive Director at Southern Highlands Reserve, “This project is legacy work — for me and so many other team members at the Reserve. The effects of this initiative will live on long after we do. It’s such a meaningful thing to do for the world, and it’s just so gratifying to see the results.”
Kelly Holdbrooks, the Reserve’s Executive Director, inspects a 1-gallon red spruce.
SASRI and the restoration plan got a healthy dose of recognition recently when a local red spruce tree, nicknamed Ruby, was selected as the US Capitol Christmas Tree last year. Among many outlets reporting the story was none other than The Washington Post.
Ruby as she stood in Pisgah Forest, left, and lit up as the 2022 US Capitol Christmas tree, right.
Click the link below to learn more about the Green-Light the Greenhouse campaign.
Meanwhile, the day-to-day efforts continue, with over 6,000 red spruce trees to date planted on public lands in NC, TN, VA through efforts by all the SASRI partners.
And they’re just getting started—the project goal for Southern Highlands Reserve is to raise 50,000 new red spruce!
The reality of such an ambitious goal, however, is presented, tongue-in-cheek, on the poster at left, which starts a whole new chapter in the story…
Southern Highlands Reserve has recently launched Green-Light the Greenhouse, a fundraising campaign in support of a new nursery facility. With more space as well as state-of-the-art technology, they can double their current production of red spruce seedlings while also reducing their carbon footprint.
Thanks to initial support from the National Forest Foundation, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Transylvania County Tourism Development Authority, they are already moving the needle in the right direction.
To learn more about this project and how you can contribute to its mission, please watch the short video below.
