About the Piney Woods

Mississippi is home to some of the best remaining longleaf pine forests - an increasingly rare ecosystem in the South.  Today, the Piney Woods area includes about half of the state's remaining longleaf pine, and a wide variety of other forests important to Mississippi landowners. 

About the Area

Longleaf pine once covered 95 million acres of the American South.  However, shifting timber practices and demand for turpentine and wood has reduced the ecosystem to about 4 million acres.

When the forests were cute, they were often replanted with much faster-growing loblolly and slash pine, but these species were much less resilient to fire and storms.  Hurricane Katrina blew hundreds of thousands of acres of loblolly and slash pine to the ground, while longleaf forests generally weathered the storm. 

Restoring and Managing Our Forests

The hurricane provided a wake-up call that restoring Mississippi's longleaf pine forests could play an important role in the region's future economic and environmental resilience, along with ensuring sustainable management across a range of forest types.