The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Longleaf Landscape Stewardship Fund expands, enhances and accelerates longleaf pine ecosystem restoration across longleaf pine’s historical range throughout the southeastern United States.
Partners
The longleaf pine ecosystem once encompassed more than 90 million acres of North America, from Virginia to Texas. Unique to the southeastern United States, it contains a stunning diversity of plants and animals, including rare and endangered wildlife like the indigo snake, red-cockaded woodpecker and gopher tortoise. Unfortunately, less than 5 percent of the original acreage remains, and threatened and endangered species that depend on the habitat are struggling to survive.
The Longleaf Landscape Stewardship Fund is a landmark public-private partnership supported with federal funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bezos Earth Fund, International Paper’s Forestland Stewards Partnership, Southern Company, Altria Group and The Orton Foundation, an affiliate of The Moore Charitable Foundation, founded by Louis Bacon, and Energy Transfer.
Funding priorities for this program include:
- Restoring the longleaf pine ecosystem through collaborative and result-oriented actions that help advance the goals of the Range-Wide Conservation Plan for Longleaf Pine;
- Maintaining, enhancing and expanding productive understory habitat of the longleaf pine ecosystem;
- Aiding federal agencies in achieving their mission-oriented objectives;
- Supporting the recovery of iconic species through habitat enhancements;
- Strengthening the capacity of local organizations to establish, advance or lead local longleaf pine ecosystem restoration efforts; and
- Expanding the number of landowners engaged in longleaf pine restoration and maintenance on private lands, and supporting working forests by demonstrating their environmental and socioeconomic benefits.
The Longleaf Landscape Stewardship Fund builds on the success of the Longleaf Legacy Program, a partnership between Southern Company and NFWF since 2004, which has invested more than $108 million into projects that will restore more than 300,000 acres of longleaf pine forest and the native species that rely on it.
| 2024 LLSF New Grantee Webinar | View Website | |
| Program Fact Sheet | Download the PDF | |
| 2024 Grant Slate | Download the PDF | |
| 2023 Grant Slate | Download the PDF | |
| Longleaf Forests and Rivers Business Plan | Download the PDF | |
| A Decade of Longleaf Conservation Infographic | Download the PDF | |
| 2022 Grant Slate | Download the PDF | |
| 2021 Grant Slate | Download the PDF | |
| 2020 Grant Slate | Download the PDF | |
| 2019 Grant Slate | Download the PDF | |
| 2018 Grant Slate | Download the PDF |
Director, Southern Regional Office
Program Director, Southern Forests
Manager, Southern Forests
Regional Program Coordinator
Related Species
Indigo snake
Indigo snakes are native to coniferous forests of the southeastern United States and prefer mature longleaf pine habitat. These non-venomous snakes which can be identified by the blue-black sheen to their scales are listed threatened under the Endangered Species Act due to population declines as a result of habitat loss and removal of individuals for pet trade.
Eastern hardwood forest birds
Eastern deciduous forests provide important habitat for forest birds, which can reside in them year-round, or rely on them as breeding grounds or stop-over sited during migration. Deciduous forests have been subject to fragmentation from extractive activities and development for many years, putting the wide variety of bird species they support at risk.
Bay-breasted warbler
Bay-breasted warblers nest in spruce and fir forests across Canada, and can be found in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and the Adirondack Park of New York. While they occupy similar habitats as Cape May and blackpoll warblers, bay-breasted warblers in particular forage at the inner mid-level, and nest in the lower third-level, of trees.
Red-cockaded woodpecker
The red-cockaded woodpecker is a territorial, highly social bird that inhabits mature fire maintained mature pine forests throughout the southeastern United States. Population declines coincided with extensive logging of longleaf pine stands in the early 20th Century, and led to the species being placed on the Endangered Species List by 1970.
Northern bobwhite quail
One of the most economically important game birds, the northern bobwhite quail is named for the distinctive 'bob-white' mating call of males throughout the breeding season. Bobwhite quail prefer shrubby areas surrounding grasslands or agricultural fields and live in groups called "coveys" during the fall and winter.
Gopher tortoise
Gopher tortoise are long-lived reptiles native to the upland pine forests of the southeastern United States. Considered a keystone species, more than 350 species of wildlife rely on their their complex burrow systems for shelter and protection, which makes widespread population declines of gopher tortoise of special conservation concern.
Golden-winged warbler
The golden-winged warbler is a striking, neotropical songbird with bright yellow plumage on the crown and wings. Their breeding range formerly extended across the Midwest to the east, but is now restricted to two isolated subpopulations: one in the higher-elevation areas of the Appalachians and the other around the Great Lakes into Manitoba. Loss of early succesional has resulted in population declines especially for the eastern population.
Cerulean warbler
The cerulean warbler is a small, migrant songbird named for the male's sky-blue plumage. It is dependent on contiguous tracts of mature, deciduous forest habitat throughout its breeding range in the eastern United States, and is particularly sensitive to the negative effects of forest fragmentation which has contributed to widespread population declines.
Bridled darter
The bridled darter is a small, freshwater fish discovered in 2007 that has a limited distribution within the headwaters of the Coosa River in northern Georgia and southern Tennessee. This species is threatened by runoff caused by agriculture and forestry activities as it is very sensitive to water pollutants.
