ALRI Celebrates Landmark Year With 2020 Range-wide Accomplishment Report

America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative released its 2020 Range-wide Accomplishment Report celebrating a decade’s worth of accomplishments and significant progress towards restoring longleaf pine. Despite a turbulent 2020, ALRI’s dedicated partners proved resilient and recorded over 1.9 million acres of accomplishments ranging from new longleaf establishment, prescribed burning, land protection, and maintenance activities. 

This past year, ALRI partners planted over 138,000 acres of new longleaf pine and protected over 34,000 acres through acquisitions and easements. Adapting to changing working conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, burn crews performed prescribed burning on 1,446,879 million acres across the longleaf range, an increase from 2019. Over 9,919 acres received silvicultural activities to convert existing forestland to longleaf-dominant forests. 

“ALRI’s unified partnership has catapulted our restoration efforts, causing a ripple effect of positive impacts,” says 2020 Longleaf Partnership Council Chair Tiffany Woods. Few initiatives impact the 100+ million residents in the Southeast to the degree of ALRI, translating to positive outcomes for local economies, national defense, rare species, recreation, forest resiliency, wildfire risk, clean air and water, carbon sequestration, and climate change mitigation.

ALRI proved truly resilient, much like the beloved longleaf pine, in the face of adversity during the 2020 pandemic, finding new ways to work, gather, and communicate to see progress continue on bringing back the longleaf pine!

Read the full findings, outcomes, and accomplishments of 2020: