Fall 2024 13 applications requiring light weight, strength, dimensional stability, and decay resistance. Common uses were for shingles, barrels, poles and pilings, house siding, small boats and canoes, and even ice cream tubs. Cedar charcoal was used during the Revolutionary War to make gunpowder. Early on, sites containing Atlantic white cedar were generally held in common, for the public good. Unfortunately, this often led to lack of controls over harvest, and at the time, there was no conception of sustainable harvest. Over-cutting, combined with no provision for regeneration, led to early reductions in range of the species. Technological advances in harvesting in the late 1800s, including steam-powered equipment and dredging (for draining of swamps for access and agriculture), led to accelerated harvest and further reductions in habitat. Fire also played a role. While infrequent, low-intensity fire could be beneficial in reducing forest floor competition, high-intensity fire often resulted in crown fires that killed Atlantic white cedar. Sites that Atlantic white cedar requires were not, by their nature, particularly prone to fire, but when fires did occur, they were often large-scale conflagrations that were devastating; killing both the trees themselves (future seed) and consuming the seed bank in the organic, peaty soils. Harvests accelerated during the late 1800s and early 1900s. For example, the period of 1880 to 1900 saw a harvest of about half the extant Atlantic white cedar range in North Carolina, perhaps as much as 100,000 acres. As the supply of Atlantic white cedar “in the woods” diminished, so did its annual harvest, leading to today’s estimate of approximately 400,000–700,000 board feet per year. A close-up of an Atlantic white cedar tree located at The Nature Conservancy’s restoration site at their Nassawango Creek Preserve. The cedar trees have been planted through an annual school and volunteer tree planting event that has been organized in partnership with the National Aquarium in Baltimore since 2009. (©MATT KANE/TNC) High-intensity fire on sites where Atlantic white cedar grows can result in loss of trees as well as destruction of the seed bank that would help restore the trees in that area. (PHOTO BY FRED SCHATZKI)
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