• restoring the forest to how it was when?
• is that even possible?
• could you just let nature take over?
  
• one definition of restoration was anything that made the condition of a forest more natural
• is it enough to plant longleaf, or how to you restore the rest of the ecosystem that went with it?

Foresters were under pressure to change their goals from timber production to ecosystem management

• Ecosystem management was adopted as the official goal of the forest service in 1992
  
• keep the ecosystem functioning rather than maximize production of timber
• this assumes that over the very long run maximizing production is likely to do some harm to the ecosystem

Military bases and the Savannah River Site played a key role in developing ecosystem management, as they never saw timber production as a central goal

• they had to change their definitions of success
• understand that pines that grew well for the first 10 years might then grow more slowly in sandy soil
• intensive production of timber isn't sustainable long term
  
• undoing mismanagement is at least clear
• in some places old growth trees survived, but without fire the ecosystem had changed

Restoration of longleaf can be very slow and labor intensive

• variation in density is natural
• adaptive management--experiment with what works within local variation of soils and water
• fire and more fire, but hold off when there is a seed crop
  
• group harvesting to create openings with enough sunlight for seedlings to grow
• in some cases environmentalists now oppose cutting trees, even then that is cutting trees that are less suited to the environment to replace them with longleaf

Managing a forest isn't like managing a farm

• natural changes come along
• conditions vary significantly from stand to stand and from year to year
• you have to keep adjusting your management