Pirelli North America employees and Berry College students planted more than 1,000 Longleaf pines Feb. 25 in the second year of the project.
Pirelli North America, as part of its sustainability efforts and activities to support local communities, has partnered with Berry and The Nature Conservancy in Georgia to support the Berry Longleaf pine project. The goal is to restore a rare and essential longleaf pine habitat, just north of Rome, Ga., a few miles away from Pirelli’s U.S. factory. The partnership will plant about 500 acres of longleaf pine per year for the next few years.
Berry College Forester Tim Chesnut and Assistant Vice President for Campus Safety and Land Management Gary Will coordinate with Berry alum and TNC program director Katie (Eady) Owens.
“Pirelli and TNC (The Nature Conservancy) have provided significant financial support for longleaf restoration at Berry over the past two years,” said Berry Biology Professor Martin Cipollini.
Pirelli donated another $10,000 to the project this year.
Cipollini noted that Longleaf forests once occupied over 92 million acres throughout the southeastern U.S., but for various reasons have been reduced to about 2% of the original range. Mountain Longleaf Pine forests are particularly rare, originally occupying mountain slopes in northwest Georgia and northeast Alabama. For over 20 years, the Berry Longleaf Pine Project has focused on restoring about 300 acres of old growth Mountain Longleaf Pine habitat and has planted another 100 acres (including three seed orchards). Berry’s restoration project is one of a small handful of similar efforts in the Mountain Longleaf pine region.
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