THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 10, 1996 TAG: 9604090113
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 204 lines
The acreage off Elbow Road in Chesapeake looks like a war zone.
Once green and wooded, there's not a tree in sight. The rutted earth is littered with branches, stumps and chunks of wood.
Nothing good, you think, could come from this devastation.
Yet look again - very closely. You may even have to get down on your hands and knees to really see, but once you do, you'll find many good reasons for celebrating Arbor Day on Friday - 7,500 of them to be exact.
Right there, underfoot and across the scarred landscape, are hundreds of tiny, 7-inch pine tree seedlings taking root in the seemingly barren earth. The seedlings are down in ruts and up on mounds of dirt. Some are obscured by twigs and branches littering the ground, but there they are, row after row of them.
Before too long those little pines, 500 of them to the acre, will turn the treeless plain to forest once more. It's something that happens again and again in Hampton Roads as well as across the state. Old trees are cut. New trees are planted. And, the whole process is planned and carried out by people who know - and care - about their work.
In a few years, the tiny trees on Elbow Road will be as high as a forester's eye. Five to seven years from now, they will be 15 or so feet tall, like the pines you can see on neighboring land just to the south on Elbow Road.
In 30 to 40 years, the trees will be tall and straight, ready for a logger to clear the land again, said Jim Bright, a chief forest warden with the Virginia Department of Forestry. Then the cycle begins anew.
Bright likens an acre of pine trees to an acre of corn.
``Only this is a 30- to 40-year rotation,'' Bright said. ``Pine is like a corn crop. It just takes longer to raise.''
The corn goes to feed livestock. The pines feed the paper and housing industries.
``Big trees are what we build houses out of,'' Bright said. ``Small trees go to the pulp mill, but everything is used.''
Pine bark becomes garden mulch. Sawdust from the mill doesn't even go to waste. It becomes bedding for horses while large saw mills also can use sawdust to produce steam, he said.
Raising a crop of pine is an investment in the future, Bright explained, like some people buy long-term treasury bills for their retirement or for their children.
``Only with pines, they have the opportunity to enjoy it,'' he went on. ``They can watch it grow.''
Bright has been a forester in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake for 27 years. In his time he's enjoyed watching many a pine seedling grow up. He still gets a little thrill when he sees the results of work he did many years ago.
``It's a good feeling to see some trees and say, `Why, I remember planting them,' '' Bright said. ``It goes both ways, though. A place on General Booth Boulevard where I worked, is all houses now.''
The General Booth Boulevard pine trees never got a chance to grow up. Although a good investment, pine trees cannot compete with the housing economy, he noted.
Bright has not yet seen a stand of pines that he planted mature enough to be logged. ``They say when you work long enough to cut the trees you planted, it's time to quit.''
Actually Bright doesn't plant the trees. It's really a partnership between landowners and the Virginia Department of Forestry that makes the pine trees grow in Hampton Roads.
Department of Forestry personnel like Bright lend their expertise to land owners and supervise their logging and reforestation projects. Bright works with area forester Toni Sanderson and forest technician John Hisghman to cover Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth and Norfolk.
They work out of a district office in Portsmouth, where other three-person corps cover Suffolk and Isle of Wight, Southampton County and Northampton and Accomac counties on the Eastern Shore. This year, more than 4 million pine trees have been planted in the district alone.
That includes 350,000 seedlings that are doing their thing on 703 acres of logged land in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. In Suffolk and Isle of Wight County, 1,525 acres have been reforested with 767,000 pines. Southampton County has had 4,200 acres planted with 2,310,000 trees, and, in Northampton and Accomac counties on the Eastern Shore, 660,700 seedlings are greening up 1,277 acres.
The district office is also responsible for duties as disparate as fighting forest fires or donning a Smokey Bear costume and appearing at special events. In Norfolk and Portsmouth, they operate urban forestry programs. One hands-on program for schoolchildren teaches them how paper is made from pine trees.
``We also donate trees to master gardeners, schools and garden clubs for Arbor Day and other events,'' Bright said.
The forestry department operates two large pine nurseries in Sussex and New Kent counties. That's where the pine trees you'll get on Arbor Day come from as well as where trees for the Elbow Road project come from.
Pine trees are the tree of choice for reforestation in this area, because in many cases that's the tree that was growing there in the first place, Sanderson explained. ``We are kind of following the lead that mother nature gave us.''
And in return, the foresters are giving mother nature and the landowners a hand.
In the case of landowners, however, they buy the trees and also pay the tree planters, Bright said. The Forestry Department serves as the middle man.
Ideally the department begins to work with a landowner from the very beginning, before he even contracts with a logger. ``Most landowners only sell timber once or twice in a lifetime,'' Bright said. ``We have some expertise and advice that can make them more money.''
Someone from the Forestry Department also is on site when the loggers are at work to make sure the land is cleared in an environmentally sound way. For example, they want to make sure loggers leave a buffer around low-lying areas and leave drainage ditches unclogged and free of debris. Bright was pleased with the logging job on Elbow Road.
``People say this looks so bad, but to us it's beautiful,'' he said. `` They say it looks like a bomb hit, but this is a good logging job.''
Bright pointed to what looked like a pile of dying branches littering the ground. The branches, he explained, had actually been strategically placed in a damp low-lying spot to prevent the loggers' trucks from rutting the soil.
The Forestry Department also works with the tree planters to make sure the trees are planted correctly. For 10 years, Bright and Sanderson have been working with Sammy Newsome, a tree planting contractor in Ahoskie, N.C. Newsome's men have tree planting down to a science.
Each can plant 3,000 trees in a good day. That day 10,000 seedlings had been brought to the Elbow Road tract. Their tender roots had been dipped in a special clay to keep the moisture in, and they were stored under a thermal blanket, also to keep the roots from drying out.
Sammy Newsome's men walked through the area, spaced 10 feet apart, carrying up to 200 seedlings each in cloth bags around their waists. The familiar feathery pine needles poked above the tops.
They each worked with a tool known as a dibble bar, a small wedge-shaped spade that opens a crevice in the earth just big enough for a little seedling root. They dropped in a seedling and closed the crevice with another wedge in the earth behind the little tree. Then they pressed the earth down tight with a heel.
The men walked right over or through branch piles, roots and twigs, planting the little trees right among the debris. ``When you get ready to cut,'' Bright said, ``all that stuff will be nothing more than compost on the forest floor.''
Bright and Sanderson checked on the tree planters' progress by randomly picking a 50-acre plot and counting the trees that had been planted in a 20-foot-diameter circle. Bright stood in the center holding one end of a 10-foot cord and Sanderson took the other end and walked the circumference, counting trees.
She also dug up three trees to make sure they were planted straight, that they were deep enough and that they were firmly in the ground. They want to be able to tug on a pine needle and pull the needle off but not pull the tree out of the ground.
Not a problem was found that day.
``If we get rain pretty soon,'' Bright said, ``we can come back next year and do a reinspection and find that 80 to 90 percent of the trees will be alive.''
Rewards don't come quickly however. Everyone knows when the loggers come in and tear up the landscape, Bright said. But no one seems to notice the tree planters. They look so small and insignificant stretched out over the large acreage and they don't make the noise the loggers make.
Even the landowner isn't really happy at first. ``They think they've thrown their money away because they can't see anything from afar,'' Bright said.
``Then suddenly there's all this green!'' MEMO: The article published in the Norfolk Compass and the Suffolk Sun on
April 11, 1996.
FREE TREES\ Arbor Day is celebrated nationally on the fourth Friday
in April. Local celebrations, however, are left to each city to plan,
and so the observance is spread over several weeks. Locally, the
Virginia Department of Forestry, Union Camp Corp. and Tidewater Builders
Association are co-sponsoring tree giveaways in these communities:
Chesapeake: Celebration was observed March 28.
Virginia Beach: Master gardeners will be giving away trees from 10
a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday at Kempsville Library and from 10 a.m. to 4:30
p.m. at the Central and Great Neck libraries.
Norfolk: Trees will be given away at the Virginia Zoo's Arbor Day
Festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at
the Norfolk Botanical Garden, the Fred Huette Center, and Janaf and
Southern shopping centers.
Portsmouth: Seedlings will be available following a ceremony at 10:30
a.m. April 26 at High Street and Rodman Avenue.
Suffolk: Several observances are planned April 26 through the city's
schools. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by STEVE EARLEY
On cover: Micah Kelley, working for Virginia Department of
Forestry...
Loblolly pine seedlings, about 7 inches high, are used to reforest
land that has been logged. In five to seven years, they will be 15
or so feet tall.
Micah Kelley uses a dribble bar, a small wedge-shaped spade that
opens a crevice in the earth just big enough for a seedling root.
The workers carry up to 100 seedlings in cloth bags with their roots
kept moist. Each worker can plant 3,000 trees in a good day.
In random fashion, Toni Sanderson checks on loblolly seedlings to
make sure they are planted straight, deep enough and firmly in the
ground. Some 80 to 90 percent of the trees survive one year, she
said.
Staff photo by STEVE EARLEY
Jim Bright, left, of the state Department of Forestry, talks with
Thomas Futrell of the planting crew. The Forestry Department works
with the tree planters to make sure the trees are planted
correctly.
by CNB