As part of an ongoing effort to restore its natural ecosystem, work is underway to thin 600 acres of nonnative slash pines and sand pines from the park.
“They were planted for pulp production and paper production, so we’re thinning them out,” Panama City Beach Parks resource officer Dale Colby said as crews worked with heavy machinery to plow over and haul out bundles of sand pines Tuesday.
The tree thinning project will take about six months to complete, and for safety purposes the park will be closed to patrons until Sept. 20.
“We’ll open up the front part, if it’s safe for our guests, as soon as possible,” Colby said, adding that the process won’t need to be repeated for another 20 years once it’s completed.
The overarching goal of the project is to restore the natural longleaf pine and wiregrass ecosystem that thrived in the area 200 years ago, Colby said. Today, a majority of the conservation park’s 2,900 acres is comprised of slash and sand pines planted by timber farmers at the turn of the century.
Longleaf pine forest once blanketed 90 million acres in the Southeastern U.S., but overharvesting and development reduced that number to just 3 million acres. However, efforts are now underway across the Southeast to restore those lost ecosystems.
“We realize we’re losing those plants and animals that go along with that long-leaf habitat,” Colby said. “We’re building a better park.”
So far, more than 90,000 long leaf pines have been planted at the park, which opened off
Frank Gillmore, manager of Nature Coast Timber, the company hired to oversee the “restoration cut,” said the removed pines will be used to make paper.
Ultimately, Gillmore said, restoring an ecosystem is a slow process.
“You can’t put a clock on it. ... It’s not like baking a cake,” Gillmore said. “This whole process takes 50 to 60 years.”