This past Friday (April 24), The Nature Conservancy was joined by local volunteers and members of the Chesapeake Conservation and Climate Corps at our Glades preserve in Accident, Maryland, to plant red spruce saplings. This year actually marks 30 years since we started planting red spruce in Western Maryland, with the Glades also being the site of our first planting in 1996.
Over a hundred years ago, red spruce trees covered thousands of acres in Western Maryland, where they provided critical shelter and food for saw-whet owls, flying squirrels, and countless other Appalachian species. At the turn of the 20th century, the demand for red spruce lumber resulted in nearly all original red spruce forests being cut down in the state. Thankfully, dedicated conservationists and volunteers have spent the past 30 years steadily bringing the tree back.
In 1996, ecologists from Maryland Heritage realized there was a trove of red spruce seedlings growing in a utility right-of-way that could be replanted in places where they had been lost. They approached the Maryland chapter of The Nature Conservancy about planting the spruce seedlings on a TNC preserve, and that kicked off an annual restoration event. In 2020, the project began collaborating with the Central Appalachian Spruce Restoration Initiative (CASRI) to help intentionally source saplings that would provide more genetic diversity to spruce trees in the region. To date, over 100,000 trees have been planted by hand in Western Maryland over the last 3 decades.
This April 24 and 25th, volunteers joined TNC and other partners at the Glades preserve in Western Maryland to plant almost 5000 saplings. The Glades is one of the oldest peatlands in MD, dating back 18,000 years, and is home to wildlife like black bears and bobcats. The continued reintroduction of red spruce will benefit the region’s forest health, biodiversity, resilience, and water quality.
Photo cutline: A stand of red spruce trees first planted 30 years ago at The Nature Conservancy’s Glades preserve in Garrett County, Maryland.
