The Forgotten Forest
Found only in the Deep South of America, longleaf pine woodlands have dwindled to about 3 percent of
their former range, but new efforts are under way to restore them.
THE BEAUTY AND THE BIODIVERSITY of the longleaf pine forest are well-kept secrets, even in its native
South. Yet it is among the richest ecosystems in North America, rivaling tallgrass prairies and the
ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest in the number of species it shelters. And like those two other
disappearing wildlife habitats, longleaf is also critically endangered.
In longleaf pine forests, trees grow widely scattered, creating an open, parklike environment, more like
a savanna than a forest. The trees are not so dense as to block the sun. This openness creates a forest
floor that is among the most diverse in the world, where plants such as many-flowered grass pinks,
trumpet pitcher plants, Venus flytraps, lavender ladies and pineland bog-buttons grow. As many as 50
different species of wildflowers, shrubs, grasses and ferns have been cataloged in just a single square
meter.
Once, nearly 92 million acres of longleaf forest flourished from Virginia to Texas, the only place in the
world where it is found. By the turn of the 21st century, however, virtually all of it had been logged,
paved or farmed into oblivion. Only about 3 percent of the original range still supports longleaf
forest, and only about 10,000 acres of that is uncut old-growth—the rest is forest that has regrown
after cutting. An estimated 100,000 of those acres are still vanishing every year. However, a quiet
movement to reverse this trend is rippling across the region. Governments, private organisations
(including NWF) and individual conservationists are looking for ways to protect and preserve the
remaining longleaf and to plant new forests for future generations.
Figuring out how to bring back the piney woods also will allow biologists to help the plants and animals
that depend on this habitat. Nearly two-thirds of the declining, threatened or endangered species in the
southeastern United States are associated with longleaf. The outright destruction of longleaf is only
part of their story, says Mark Danaher, the biologist for South Carolina's Francis Marion National
Forest. He says the demise of these animals and plants also is tied to a lack of fire, which once swept
through the southern forests on a regular basis. "Fire is absolutely critical for this ecosystem and for
the species that depend on it," says Danaher.
Name just about any species that occurs in longleaf and you can find a connection to fire. Bachman's
sparrow is a secretive bird with a beautiful song that echoes across the longleaf flatwoods. It tucks
its nest on the ground beneath clumps of wiregrass and little bluestem in the open under-story. But once
fire has been absent for several years, and a tangle of shrubs starts to grow, the sparrows disappear.
Gopher tortoises, the only native land tortoises east of the Mississippi, are also abundant in longleaf.
A keystone species for these forests, its burrows provide homes and safety to more than 300 species of
vertebrates and invertebrates ranging from eastern diamond-back rattlesnakes to gopher frogs. If fire is
suppressed, however, the tortoises are choked out. "If we lose fire," says Bob Mitchell, an ecologist at
the Jones Center, "we lose wildlife."
Without fire, we also lose longleaf. Fire knocks back the oaks and other hardwoods that can grow up to
overwhelm longleaf forests. "They are fire forests," Mitchell says. "They evolved in the lightning
capital of the eastern United States." And it wasn't only lightning strikes that set the forest aflame.
"Native Americans also lit fires to keep the forest open," Mitchell says. "So did the early pioneers.
They helped create the longleaf pine forests that we know today."
Fire also changes how nutrients flow throughout longleaf ecosystems, in ways we are just beginning to
understand. For example, researchers have discovered that frequent fires provide extra calcium, which is
critical for egg production, to endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers. Frances James, a retired avian
ecologist from Florida State University, has studied these small black-and-white birds for more than two
decades in Florida's sprawling Apalachicola National Forest. When she realised female woodpeckers laid
larger clutches in the first breeding season after their territories were burned, she and her colleagues
went searching for answers. "We learned calcium is stashed away in woody shrubs when the forest is not
burned," James says. "But when there is a fire, a pulse of calcium moves down into the soil and up into
the longleaf." Eventually, this calcium makes its way up the food chain to a tree-dwelling species of
ant, which is the red-cockaded's favorite food. The result: more calcium for the birds, which leads to
more eggs, more young and more woodpeckers.
Today, fire is used as a vital management tool for preserving both longleaf and its wildlife. Most of
these fires are prescribed burns, deliberately set with a drip torch. Although the public often opposes
any type of fire—and the smoke that goes with it—these frequent, low-intensity burns reduce the risk of
catastrophic conflagrations. "Forests are going to burn," says Amadou Diop, NWF's southern forests
restoration manager. "It's just a question of when. With prescribed burns, we can pick the time and the
place."
Diop is spearheading a new NWF effort to restore longleaf. "It's a species we need to go back to," he
says. Educating landowners about the advantages of growing longleaf is part of the program, he adds,
which will soon be under way in nine southern states. "Right now, most longleaf is on public land," says
Jerry McCollum, president of the Georgia Wildlife Federation. "Private land is where we need to work,"
he adds, pointing out that more than 90 percent of the acreage within the historic range of longleaf
falls under this category.
Interest among private landowners is growing throughout the South, but restoring longleaf is not an easy
task. The herbaceous layer—the understory of wiregrasses and other plants – also needs to be re-created.
In areas where the land has not been chewed up by farming, but converted to loblolly or slash pine
plantations, the seed bank of the longleaf forest usually remains viable beneath the soil. In time, this
original vegetation can be coaxed back. Where agriculture has destroyed the seeds, however, wiregrass
must be replanted. Right now, the expense is prohibitive, but researchers are searching for low-cost
solutions.
Bringing back longleaf is not for the short-sighted, however. Few of us will be alive when the pines
being planted today become mature forests in 70 to 80 years. But that is not stopping longleaf
enthusiasts. "Today, it's getting hard to find longleaf seedlings to buy," one of the private landowners
says. "Everyone wants them. Longleaf is in a resurgence."
Wealth in A Cold Climate
Latitude is crucial to a nation's economic strength.
A Dr William Masters was reading a book about mosquitoes when inspiration struck. "There
was this anecdote about the great yellow fever epidemic that hit Philadelphia in 1793," Masters recalls.
"This epidemic decimated the city until the first frost came." The inclement weather froze out the
insects, allowing Philadelphia to recover.
B If weather could be the key to a city's fortunes, Masters thought, then why not to the
historical fortunes of nations? And could frost lie at the heart of one of the most enduring economic
mysteries of all—why are almost all the wealthy, industrialised nations to be found at latitudes above
40 degrees? After two years of research, he thinks that he has found a piece of the puzzle. Masters, an
agricultural economist from Purdue University in Indiana, and Margaret McMillan at Tufts University,
Boston, show that annual frosts are among the factors that distinguish rich nations from poor ones.
Their study is published this month in the Journal of Economic Growth. The pair speculate that cold
snaps have two main benefits – they freeze pests that would otherwise destroy crops, and also freeze
organisms, such as mosquitoes, that carry disease. The result is agricultural abundance and a big
workforce.
C The academics took two sets of information. The first was average income for
countries, the second climate data from the University of East Anglia. They found a curious tally
between the sets. Countries having five or more frosty days a month are uniformly rich, those with fewer
than five are impoverished. The authors speculate that the five-day figure is important; it could be the
minimum time needed to kill pests in the soil. Masters says: "For example, Finland is a small country
that is growing quickly, but Bolivia is a small country that isn't growing at all. Perhaps climate has
something to do with that." In fact, limited frosts bring huge benefits to farmers. The chills kill
insects or render them inactive; cold weather slows the break-up of plant and animal material in the
soil, allowing it to become richer; and frosts ensure a build-up of moisture in the ground for spring,
reducing dependence on seasonal rains. There are exceptions to the "cold equals rich" argument. There
are well-heeled tropical places such as Hong Kong and Singapore, a result of their superior trading
positions. Like-wise, not all European countries are moneyed in the former communist colonies, economic
potential was crushed by politics.
D Masters stresses that climate will never be the overriding factor – the wealth of
nations is too complicated to be attributable to just one factor. Climate, he feels, somehow combines
with other factors such as the presence of institutions, including governments, and access to trading
routes to determine whether a country will do well. Traditionally, Masters says, economists thought that
institutions had the biggest effect on the economy, because they brought order to a country in the form
of, for example, laws and property rights. With order, so the thinking went, came affluence. "But there
are some problems that even countries with institutions have not been able to get around," he says. "My
feeling is that, as countries get richer, they get better institutions. And the accumulation of wealth
and improvement in governing institutions are both helped by a favourable environment, including
climate."
E This does not mean, he insists, that tropical countries are beyond economic help and
destined to remain penniless. Instead, richer countries should change the way in which foreign aid is
given. Instead of aid being geared towards improving governance, it should be spent on technology to
improve agriculture and to combat disease. Masters cites one example: "There are regions in India that
have been provided with irrigation, agricultural productivity has gone up and there has been an
improvement in health." Supplying vaccines against tropical diseases and developing crop varieties that
can grow in the tropics would break the poverty cycle.
F Other minds have applied themselves to the split between poor and rich nations, citing
anthropological, climatic and zoological reasons for why temperate nations are the most affluent. In 350
BC, Aristotle observed that "those who live in a cold climate…are full of spirit". Jared Diamond, from
the University of California at Los Angeles, pointed out in his book Guns, Germs and Steel that Eurasia
is broadly aligned east-west, while Africa and the Americas are aligned north-south. So, in Europe,
crops can spread quickly across latitudes because climates are similar. One of the first domesticated
crops, einkorn wheat, spread quickly from the Middle East into Europe; it took twice as long for corn to
spread from Mexico to what is now the eastern United States. This easy movement along similar latitudes
in Eurasia would also have meant a faster dissemination of other technologies such as the wheel and
writing, Diamond speculates. The region also boasted domesticated livestock, which could provide meat,
wool and motive power in the fields. Blessed with such natural advantages, Eurasia was bound to take off
economically.
G John Gallup and Jeffrey Sachs, two US economists, have also pointed out striking
correlations between the geographical location of countries and their wealth. They note that tropical
countries between 23.45 degrees north and south of the equator are nearly all poor. In an article for
the Harvard International Review, they concluded that "development surely seems to favour the
temperate-zone economies, especially those in the northern hemisphere, and those that have managed to
avoid both socialism and the ravages of war". But Masters cautions against geographical determinism, the
idea that tropical countries are beyond hope: "Human health and agriculture can be made better through
scientific and technological research," he says, "so we shouldn't be writing off these countries. Take
Singapore: without air conditioning, it wouldn't be rich."
Motivating Drives
Scientists have been researching the way to get employees motivated for many years. This research is a
relational study which builds the fundamental and comprehensive model for study. This is especially true
when the business goal is to turn unmotivated teams into productive ones. But their researchers have
limitations. It is like studying the movements of car without taking out the engine.
Motivation is what drives people to succeed and plays a vital role in enhancing an organizational
development. It is important to study the motivation of employees because it is related to the emotion
and behavior of employees. Recent studies show there are four drives for motivation. They are the drive
to acquire, the drive to bond, the drive to comprehend and the drive to defend.
The Drive to Acquire
The drive to acquire must be met to optimize the acquire aspect as well as the achievement element. Thus
the way that outstanding performance is recognized, the type of perks that is provided to polish the
career path. But sometimes a written letter of appreciation generates more motivation than a thousand
dollar check, which can serve as the invisible power to boost business engagement. Successful
organizations and leaders not only need to focus on the optimization of physical reward but also on
moving other levers within the organization that can drive motivation.
The Drive to Bond
The drive to bond is also key to driving motivation. There are many kinds of bonds between people, like
friendship, family. In company, employees also want to be an essential part of company. They want to
belong to the company. Employees will be motivated if they find personal belonging to the company. In
the meantime, the most commitment will be achieved by the employee on condition that the force of
motivation within the employee affects the direction, intensity and persistence of decision and behavior
in company.
The Drive to Comprehend
The drive to comprehend motivates many employees to higher performance. For years, it has been known that
setting stretch goals can greatly impact performance. Organizations need to ensure that the various job
roles provide employees with simulation that challenges them or allow them to grow. Employees don't want
to do meaningless things or monotonous job. If the job didn't provide them with personal meaning and
fulfillment, they will leave the company.
The Drive to Defend
The drive to defend is often the hardest lever to pull. This drive manifests itself as a quest to create
and promote justice, fairness, and the ability to express ourselves freely. The organizational lever for
this basic human motivator is resource allocation. This drive is also met through an employee feeling
connection to a company. If their companies are merged with another, they will show worries.
Two studies have been done to find the relations between the four drives and motivation. The article
based on two studies was finally published in Harvard Business Review. Most authors' arguments have laid
emphasis on four-drive theory and actual investigations. Using the results of the surveys which executed
with employees from Fortune 500 companies and other two global businesses (P company and H company), the
article mentions about how independent drives influence employees' behavior and how organizational
levers boost employee motivation.
The studies show that the drive to bond is most related to fulfilling commitment, while the drive to
comprehend is most related to how much effort employees spend on works. The drive to acquire can be
satisfied by a rewarding system which ties rewards to performances, and gives the best people
opportunities for advancement. For drive to defend, a study on the merging of P company and H company
shows that employees in former company show an unusual cooperating attitude.
The key to successfully motivate employees is to meet all drives. Each of these drives is important if we
are to understand employee motivation. These four drives, while not necessarily the only human drives,
are the ones that are central to unified understanding of modern human life.