The Art of Managing Longleaf: A Personal History of the Stoddard-neel Approach

by Neel, Leon; Sutter, Paul S. (CON); Way, Albert G. (CON); Franklin, Jerry F. (AFT)

• ISBN13: 9780820330471
• ISBN10: 0820330477
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-02-15
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

Greenwood Plantation in the Red Hills region of southwest Georgia includes a rare one-thousand-acre stand of old-growth longleaf pine woodlands, a remnant of an ecosystem that once covered close to ninety million acres across the Southeast. The Art of Managing Longleaf documents the sometimes controversial management system that not only has protected Greenwood's "Big Woods" but also has been practiced on a substantial acreage of the remnant longleaf pine woodlands in the Red Hills and other parts of the Coastal Plain. Often described as an art informed by science, the Stoddard-Neel Approach combines frequent prescribed burning, highly selective logging, a commitment to a particular woodland aesthetic, intimate knowledge of the ecosystem and its processes, and other strategies to manage the longleaf pine ecosystem in a sustainable way.The namesakes of this method are Herbert Stoddard (who developed it) and his colleague and successor, Leon Neel (who has refined it). In addition to presenting a detailed, illustrated outline of the Stoddard-Neal Approach, the bookbased upon an extensive oral history project undertaken by Paul S. Sutter and Albert G. Way, with Neel as its major subjectdiscusses Neel's deep familial and cultural roots in the Red Hills; his years of work with Stoddard; and the formation and early years of the Tall Timbers Research Station, which Stoddard and Neel helped found in the pinelands near Tallahassee, Florida, in 1958. In their introduction, environmental historians Sutter and Way provide an overview of the longleaf ecosystem's natural and human history, and in his afterword, forest ecologist Jerry F. Franklin affirms the value of the Stoddard-Neel Approach.

Author Biography

Leon Neel is a forestry consultant and land manager who lives in Thomasville, Georgia. Paul S. Sutter is an associate professor of history at the University of Georgia and editor of the Press’s Environmental History and the American South series. His books include Environmental History and the American South: A Reader. Albert G. Way is a postdoctoral fellow in southern studies at the Institute for Southern Studies, University of South Carolina.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Introduction: Forestry beyond One Generation	p. 1
Growing Up in the Woods	p. 27
Time Well Spent with Mr. Stoddard	p. 59
The Early Years of Tall Timbers Research Station	p. 103
The Stoddard-Neel Approach: Managing the Trees for the Forest	p. 148
Afterword: The Legacy of Leon Neel	p. 194
Notes	p. 199
Index	p. 205
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