JANET McCONNAUGHEY Associated Press AP Photo/Janet McConnaughey Silviciulturist Keith Coursey stands in a thicket of gallberries â one of the shrubs that would block the sun from grasses and wildflowers in longleaf pine forests without regular fires â in front of a stand of 80- to 85-foot-tall longleaf pines in the DeSoto National Forest on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020. DESOTO NATIONAL FOREST, Miss. — When European settlers came to North America, fire-dependent savannas anchored by lofty pines with footlong needles covered much of what became the southern United States. Yet by the 1990s, logging and clear-cutting for farms and development had all but eliminated longleaf pines and the grasslands beneath where hundreds of plant and animal species flourished.