Page 9 - Georgia Forestry - Issue2 - Spring 2019

ERING
Story by Reid Singer
and blowdown. It also helped the family to reproduce the landscape that European settlers encountered when they first arrived in the region, over 300 years ago.
By thinning 175 acres of longleaf in the fall of 2018, Butler was following a five-year plant-and-harvest cycle that allowed his business to make money, maintain the forest’s ecological balance, and receive income tax ben- efits through a conservation easement that had been granted to the farm by the state in 2007. It was a well-
timed harvest — or would have been, had it not exposed the tree stand to southerly winds, which started to pick up just as the thinning project neared completion.
“They were finishing up cutting and dragging the last few trees,” Butler said in January, pointing to a hedge grove where the harvest had taken place. “That opened it up, wide open, for these trees to catch the full brunt of the heavy wind coming through. This is probably some of the worst damage we have.”
From the 2018 Storms
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