Dixie Plantation, College of Charleston

There’s new life at Dixie Plantation: 75,000 new lives, to be exact.

Thanks to a donation from ArborGen – a Ridgeville, S.C., seedling supplier – the longleaf pine seedlings were planted across 144 acres of the College’s 881-acre property on the Stono River and Intracoastal Waterway. A gift supporting the comprehensive plan to restore Dixie to its original condition as a “conservationist’s classroom,” the seedlings also help re-establish the longleaf pine forests that stretched across the Southeastern coastal plain before clear-cutting practices all but depleted them by 1920. There is renewed interest in restoring these longleaf ecosystems throughout their natural range – in part because they are rich in biodiversity, providing habitat and food sources for many animals and birds, including the now-endangered, longleaf-dependent red-cockaded woodpecker.

And so it seems it doesn’t end with our seedlings: There’s much more new life to be found at Dixie Plantation.