Alabama Power and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) announced joint awards for longleaf pine restoration projects impacting Alabama and other states within the Southern Company service area.

The grants are part of the NFWF Longleaf Stewardship Fund, which supports the restoration and conservation of the longleaf pine ecosystems across the Southeast. Since 2004, Alabama Power, Southern Company and NFWF have helped restore more than 82,000 acres of longleaf pine forest and the species that rely on it.

“This partnership is one of the many ways Alabama Power is able to support environmental stewardship projects across our state,” said Matt Bowden, vice president of Environmental Affairs for Alabama Power. “These grants are important to helping expand conservation efforts that have already had a tremendous impact on longleaf pine in Alabama since our partnership began twelve years ago.”

Projects within Alabama Power’s service area that have been awarded grants from Longleaf Stewardship Fund include:

• The Gulf Coastal Plain Ecosystem Partnership (GCPEP) will restore and manage the longleaf ecosystem in the Florida panhandle and southern Alabama. The Longleaf Alliance and partners will burn 20,000 acres, control invasive species on 350 acres, treat 1,100 acres of mid-story hardwoods and restore 330 acres of longleaf pine in Blackwater River State Forest in Milton, Florida. Outreach to engage private landowners will include demonstration sites showcasing effective methods to establish native groundcover and control invasive species.

The project will support the natural resource and encroachment protection goals of Eglin Air Force Base by expanding potential off-base habitat for listed species, including the flatwoods salamander.

• The National Wildlife Federation and Alabama Wildlife Federation will work with partners to restore 4,000 new acres of longleaf pine on private lands and enhance an additional 1,000 acres with prescribed fire. The project will continue progress connecting, partnering and building a network of practitioners and advocates of longleaf pine restoration in Alabama. The project also will provide technical assistance and information to landowners in high-priority areas, including cost-share programs to develop conservation plans for establishing and managing longleaf and a prescribed fire training series.

• The Talladega-Mountain Longleaf Pine Conservation Partnership will engage private landowners in on-the-ground longleaf restoration and education projects. The Nature Conservancy’s Alabama chapter and partners will establish longleaf on 100 acres of private lands and 300 acres of the Coosa Wildlife Management Area, which is extremely important to one of Alabama's largest red-cockaded woodpecker populations. The project also will enhance more than 8,100 acres of longleaf habitat through prescribed fire and other management practices.  

This year, 15 projects across eight states received Longleaf Stewardship Fund awards. It is anticipated that through these projects more than 11,800 acres of longleaf pine habitat will be restored and an additional 116,000 acres will be enhanced, benefiting an incredible diversity of species native to the longleaf ecosystem.

The longleaf pine ecosystem once covered more than 90 million acres across nine states, from Virginia to Texas, but dropped to only 3 percent of its original acreage. With the diverse public-private commitment to longleaf pine restoration in recent years, longleaf pine forest has increased from roughly 3 million acres to an estimated 4.4 million acres, halting and reversing a century-long decline and benefiting many threatened and endangered species dependent on the habitat.

Alabama Power, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE: SO), provides electricity to more than 1.4 million customers across the state. To learn more about the company’s environmental stewardship efforts, visit www.alabamapower.com and click “environmental.”

To learn more about NFWF, visit www.nfwf.org.