Tree Farmer Helps Restore a Southern Treasure

Longleaf pine restoration aids endangered woodpecker

Posted: 03-May-2004; Updated: 05-Sep-2007

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Landowner Jerry Holder has enrolled his property in a Safe Harbor program to benefit the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. (Photo: Melissa McGaw/NC Wildlife Resources Commission.)

NAME: Jerry Holder
OCCUPATION: Self-employed forest owner, former president of the North Carolina Pine Needle Producers Association
STATE: North Carolina
SPECIES: Red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis)

Jerry Holder earns a good part of his living raking pine straw. Pine straw may not seem valuable, but it is like gold in the Tar Heel State due to its value as a landscaping mulch. The best kind of pine straw comes from the once abundant longleaf pines, which once covered some 70-90 million acres of the South.

The Loss of Longleaf

The problem is that over the years this native species was replaced by loblolly pine, whose faster growth helped it become the South's number one commercial pine species. Loblolly pine, however, doesn’t produce valuable straw, like the longleaf pine. It also doesn’t produce as valuable habitat for a variety of endangered species like the red-cockaded woodpecker. By encouraging landowners to grow longleaf for its pine straw, Holder was doing a great favor for the red-cockaded woodpecker. But having an endangered species on one's property hasn't always been a desirable thing to many landowners. For the past 30 years or so, since the Endangered Species Act changed the face of wildlife protection, there has been a conflict between what landowners want and what red-cockaded woodpeckers need. If longleaf forests on one's property attracted the woodpecker, the landowner would be saddled with endangered species regulations, so the thinking went. To avoid such hassles, many folks planted loblollies.(View our longleaf pine slide show.)

A Glorious Southern History

But like red-cockaded woodpeckers, longleaf pines have a glorious Southern history. Back when tar was an essential ingredient in shipbuilding, and ships were imperative to a strong military, the longleaf pines that blanketed North Carolina were the primary tar source. One story has it that the Tar Heel nickname refers to the thick black substance that would stick to laborers' shoes when collecting the tar. A century ago, red-cockaded woodpeckers nested in mature longleaf forests, where natural disturbances, such as wildfires sparked by lightning strikes, cleared out the understory. As the longleafs vanished, so did the woodpecker.

A Safe Harbor Solution

During his term as president of the North Carolina Pine Needle Producers Association in the early 1990s, Holder, whose ties to the Sandhills area go back two generations, learned about the new Safe Harbor program Environmental Defense was developing with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The tree farmer recognized an opportunity to manage his land to attract the endangered woodpeckers while retaining his freedom to someday use the land for other purposes, such as timber production.

As much as he would like to dedicate his property solely to wildlife, like many landowners, Holder values his property as the equivalent of a retirement account or a safety net, should misfortune strike. Safe Harbor allows Holder to manage his land for endangered species while also preserving his financial investment. He credited Environmental Defense for finding "positive incentives for private landowners through the Safe Harbor program to include the red-cockaded woodpecker in their management plans, and for giving [me] the opportunity to help out."

In 1997, the North Carolina Wildlife Federation recognized Jerry Holder as 1997 Forest Conservationist of the Year. His acceptance speech revealed a vision of landownership that goes beyond earning a living: he feels that landowners, whether public or private, "have a responsibility to the future generations to keep their land in productivity so that they will have affordable lumber, wildlife to enjoy, and healthy, locally grown and produced food and fiber." The Safe Harbor program is helping Holder accomplish this goal.