The Great Smoky Mountains National Park may seem like an odd place for a plantation of 600 Christmas trees, but this special planting on the park’s eastern border may hold the key to the future of the imperiled Fraser fir tree.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park plays host to some of the Southeast’s largest remaining populations of wild Fraser firs. These trees provide food and shelter for a wide variety of animals, birds, and insects, and their fragrant smell is a delight to many of the park’s 10 million annual visitors. Also, commercial stands of Fraser firs outside the park provide tens of thousands of trees to families throughout the country each holiday season.

Unfortunately, the Fraser fir faces a number of challenges, including air pollution, fungal diseases, and an exotic insect – the balsam woolly adelgid.

“This exotic species attacks older Fraser firs to the point of killing them,” said Bob Miller, spokesman for Great Smoky Mountains National Park. “Our researchers estimate that the adelgid has wiped out over 70 percent of the park’s Fraser firs in the last 30 years.”

Solutions to the Fraser fir’s decline have been elusive. As a part of the recovery effort, researchers at Great Smoky Mountains National Park have established a plantation of 600 native Fraser fir trees on park land near Maggie Valley, North Carolina. Each tree was selected for parentage representing various fir forest communities in the park. The trees require regular maintenance and are sprayed with a non-toxic soap solution to ward off adelgid infestation until the trees can serve as future seed producers.

While this stand of trees helps maintain an important genetic reserve, researchers are hard at work trying to understand the causes and solutions to the Fraser fir’s decline. While the balsam woolly adelgid remains the main culprit, fungal diseases, genetic differences, and acid deposition may each play a role in explaining why some trees survive and others do not.

Helping fund this important work is Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a non-profit organization that raises money and provides volunteers for park projects. Funding sources include annual contributions from The Christmas Place in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and a recent grant of $10,000 from The Home Depot. The National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the University of Tennessee have provided additional funding.

“These contributions represent a true team effort to help secure a brighter future for the Fraser fir in the park – and indirectly, throughout the country,” said George Ivey, director of the North Carolina office of Friends of the Smokies. “The research conducted this year has been very promising, and we’re happy to play a role in making it happen.”

Additional contributions to support the park’s ongoing Fraser fir research and recovery efforts may be sent to Friends of the Smokies, 160 South Main Street, Waynesville, NC, 28786. For more information, call 828.452.0720.

 

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The Smoky Mountain News