Volunteers taking first step toward restoring fire-ravaged Lost Pines

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AUSTIN – Thanks to corporate and individual donations, volunteers working with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department staff are beginning to replant the fire-ravaged Lost Pines.

In the first step toward restoring the drought-hardy Loblolly pines lost in the devastating 2011 Labor Day wildfire, volunteers and Bastrop State Park staff will start hand planting 220,000 pine seedlings in the park at 7:30 a.m. Saturday. This process, including contract labor, will continue into February, with a total of 2 million seedlings to be planted over the next five years.

The park has scheduled 21 volunteer planting days, including 10 public planting dates and 11 school group planting dates.

“We’re scheduling 60 volunteers per day and we already have all the volunteers we need for Saturday,” says Bastrop State Park Complex Superintendent Jamie Hackett, “but we still have openings available for the other planting dates.”

Public volunteer workdays will be Dec. 1, 2, 13, 29 and 30 and Jan. 10, 12, 13, 26, 27.

To sign up for volunteer workday opportunities go to www.arborday.org/texas

The trees to be planted this season were paid for by the Apache Corporation. Donors picking up the cost of the planting this year include: The Nobelity Project, Applied Materials Foundation, Silicon Labs, Friends of the Lost Pines State Parks, KOOP Radio, They Might Be Monkeys Arborist, Houston Bicycle Club, Frontier Bank, Centro-Matic, First National Bank Bastrop, Bastrop County Audubon Society, Smithville Garden Club, Centex Mechanical, TOWN-Austin, Breed & Co., Shomos Family Foundation, and many other private donors.